What is SEO and how it works? Everything you must know.
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Well, though search engine being the most complex algorithmic technology in Digital Marketing we’ve tried to explain it in more simpler manner. Now next question arises, What is SEO and how it works?
Every blogger or web developer wants their website or blog article must get visible in top 10 results on google search engine.
But, very few of them succeed wonder why?
As many of us are unaware of factors that helps to rank on first page of google search and thus end ups in just creating website.
Guys,
Remember just by creating your website or blog articles you won’t get it in top 10 result of google search. In order to rank on google search results you have to follow some importance SEO guidelines.
Lets see what is SEO and how it works –
What is SEO?
Search engine optimization is process of optimizing your website in order to rank higher in search results. Its includes making changes to you your website contents in such a way that your website looks attractive to google search engine as compare to your competitor for particular search term within your website niche.
Now:
Just by optimizing a website content can you rank a website on first page of search engine results?
Answer is NO.
As I told earlier SEO is complex search algorithm. Its not easy to rank on google first page search results. But its not so difficult to rank google search engine either.
One can easily rank their website.
How?
Just follow below optimizing tips.
Before going into more details we will understand how search results are ranked by google search engine.
How Does SEO works?
We’ve learned what is SEO now lets understand how it works.
Search engine is algorithm which takes search query (often called keyword) and compare all website articles available in its database that matches to search query. Then based on comparison search engine ranks top articles that has most relevant and useful information for searcher. This comparison includes various on page and off page SEO factors. This way search engine always focus on providing best relevant result for its users and serve them better.
Lets understand this process with an example.
Suppose you type search query as california sandals. This query search engine compares with all articles in its database that are having relevant information on california sandals.
Now all articles are compared based on their keyword to content relevancy factors. Search engine then ranks this articles based on relevancy score obtained during comparison.
Website will highest relevancy score will rank on top of search result.
Thus, search engine always delivers better user experience and retain user interaction for next queries.
Now we know what is SEO and how it works lets see most important SEO ranking factors that google considers which ranking websites in search results.
Top SEO ranking factors
Well, there are plenty of factors that google algorithm may consider while ranking websites on search result.
Google being the biggest search engine giant in the world with driving approximately around 92% of total search traffic wont be sharing its exact algorithm.
Besides this,
Google always keeps on updating its algorithm and keeps on including new factors to consider while ranking.
Hence, its not easy to always maintain your rank over google search results.
Ultimate goal of Google is to make search experience of its visitors more excellent. Lets focus on most important SEO factors that leave greater impact on your website ranking.
I assure, once you understand this SEO factors you could definitely rank your website on google search.
1. Content writing – Google loves quality contents.
Content is the most important factor that you must consider while you optimize your website for SEO. Google gives more focus on quality and relevancy of content that you share on your articles.
Google always wants to serve its user with better user experience and thus keeps on updating its algorithm for serving its user with most relevant articles for their query.
Articles with natural, relevant and detailed information will always attract google search bots.
While posting articles or writing contents for website you must not just copy and paste information from some other web articles.
Remember,
You must include natural and owned written articles on your websites or else copying others contents may also leads to penalizing your website leaving negative impact of your articles on google bots. This wont rank your website.
Always, try to keep your articles relevant and look more natural,
Apart from content relevancy content writing also focus on targeting your keyword phrase in more accurate manner throughout your article, maintaining text length, keyword density.
2. On page SEO
On page SEO factors are easy for implementation. It means optimizing your on page contents in such way that it targets your keyword or keyword phrase in complete manner.
Here are few on page factors that can improve your SEO ranking in Google.
Title tag-
Title tag must be specified for all your website articles as it tells google what your page is about. You must have title tag with your focus keyword with entire length no more than 70 characters.
Meta description-
Meta descriptions are included right immediately after title tag on website. Its tells more information about your article to google. Having your focus keyword at the beginning of meta description in more natural way is good SEO practice. Entire length for meta description must be within 158 – 160 characters.
Headings-
Make sure to maintain proper headings for your article. Maintain H1, H2, H3 and H4 heading tags hierarchy throughout your article. This not only improves reading experience of users but also attracts google search bots. Try including your keyword phrase in H1 tag in way that looks more natural.
Internal links-
Internal links are links on your article that are liked to other articles / post from your own website. This often helps search engines to crawl through your website and lets them to learn more about your website architechture. Make sure to link only related articles so that internal links looks more natural.
Image name and alt tag-
When you include some images in your articles make sure that you name it with relevant keyword terms that your article is about. Also mention alt tag. This will also helps in ranking your images on google when images are search based on your keywords on google sear engine
Tip : While you implement on page SEO make sure do not over optimize your article with focus keyword otherwise google will penalize your website.
3. Off page SEO
Unlike on page SEO have direct control over its factors, off page SEO gives no direct control over its factors that impact your search ranking. When your article is more relevant and interesting more people will like to link to it, share it socially or bookmark it.
As more and more people starts referring, trusting in your articles, search engines will also get to know about this and starts building trust in it.
Find below few of off page SEO factors to rank your website articles
Trust-
Trust is important factor that google considers while comparing relevancy matrix. Best way to built your trust is to have quality backlinks to your article. Quality backlinks comes from websites with higher DA (domain authority). This tells google how legitimate your website is thus built your trust.
Quality banklinks-
As seen earlier quality backlinks to your website will help your to improve your website authority. Quality backlinks becomes the backbone in off page seo factors. More the authority website have links to your website more it will help to built your domain authority. Google always have higher priority in ranking for authority domains.
Social Signals-
Another most important factor is social media. No one can know limitations of what power social media holds in bringing traffic to your articles. More the articles people share like or talk about over social platforms the more attraction it gets by search engine bots. Ultimately this will keep your articles on google priority on search engine as well.
Tip: While including backlinks make sure to link back domains with higher DA (domain authority). Backlinks from low DA may not give expected results
Final takeaways
So we have learned about what is SEO and how it works, now you might got aware of most important factors that to be consider while optimizing your website articles. You can now make necessary changes to your articles based on above SEO guidelines and rank your website higher on google search results.
You have to give time for your SEO to work, its not magic that as soon as you optimize your article and your article will get rank. It requires patience to see exact SEO results.
Generally it may take months to get desired results of your hard work over search engine optimization. Learn more about top 10 seo factors that will rank your webpage on google search results