SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
Beginner's Guide to SEO
What is SEO?
SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is a process of optimizing a website property to make it rank higher on the search engines. For the most part, SEO involves a deliberate effort at having a website appear high on the organic rankings on the search engines rather than the paid (ad spots) rankings. SEO Santa Barbara are specialist in reaching the first positions in the search results.
How SEO Works?
Search Engine Optimization can seem like a very complex thing to wrap one's head around given that there are more than 200 factors that search engines such as Google use to rank websites. Nonetheless, the entire process that most search engines use is not that hard to decipher. At the heart of everything Yahoo, DuckDuckGo or Google do is the desire to provide the best information and answers to clients searching for that information.
To provide such information the search engines have a database of billions of pages on the world wide web, which they crawl and index to help them understand the content contained in each. However, while the search engines do intend to provide the most relevant answers, there are other factors that are taken into consideration. Such factors will determine which websites that may have similar information will rank higher on the search engines.
To provide such information the search engines have a database of billions of pages on the world wide web, which they crawl and index to help them understand the content contained in each. However, while the search engines do intend to provide the most relevant answers, there are other factors that are taken into consideration. Such factors will determine which websites that may have similar information will rank higher on the search engines.
The following are some of the aspects that search engines take into account in ranking web pages:
Onsite factors – website infrastructure and content of the page
1) Optimizing the architecture and infrastructure of the website for better user experience 2) Creating content intended to fulfill the needs of a certain group of searchers 3) Optimizing content by including specific target keywords popular on the search engines 4) Targeting appropriate keyword clusters |
Offsite – the reputation that a website has from other websites
1) Building or earning links from relevant high-quality websites in your vertical 2) Having an active and engaged presence on the major social media platforms 3) Having a presence in local or national industry forums and publications (citations) |
How to Do SEO?
More than half of the results that you get from doing SEO will come from offsite SEO campaigns. Nonetheless, you still need to do both onsite (on-page SEO) and offsite (Off-page SEO) to get desired results for your website.
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO refers to the elements the elements that you actively optimize on your website to get higher rankings. As opposed to off page SEO, you have all the control in on-page SEO. You can tweak and test your approaches very easily with on page by changing aspects such as keywords clusters, page speed, and interlinking among others.
Alt and Image Tags – When creating content for your website, using image and alt tags could help you rank higher. The search engines are robots and cannot see your image. As such, by having a descriptive image and alt tags when writing content, you stand a better chance of ranking higher for such terms. Moreover, your images could also rank high in the SERPS when users search for images of those keywords in your descriptive alt and image tags.
Internal Links
Building internal links to other related pages on your website not only provides contextual relevance on what the target page is about but also on the general topic relevance of the entire website. For instance, if you are writing about how to use an electric breast pump, you can link internally from that page to best electric breast pumps. This tells the search engine that the target page deserves to rank for best electric breast pumps but also that the general topic of your website is breast pumps.
Sub Headings
Subheading serve a dual purpose as they are written for both the search engines and the website's readers. Subheadings improve the user experience as they make it easy for skimmers to skim and find the most interesting parts of content. As for the search engines, subheadings tags such as H1, H2, and H3 make it easy for the search engine to understand the overall context of the content which could make it rank higher.
Meta Description
The meta description is hardly used by any of the major search engines though it is still a critical component for the SEO of a website. The meta description is the little snippet of words the search engines show in the search results so that visitors can understand what the page is about. If you optimize the page so that it gets a better click-through rate, it could benefit your website’s rankings over the competition.
Title Tags
As opposed to the meta description the search engines take into account the title tags. The title tags is the topic sentence of the page that tells the search engine what the content is about. The best way to optimize for the search engines is to include the most important keywords you are targeting in the title tag.
Keyword density
While how many times you use a keyword is one of the components that the search engines use to determine the relevance of a page, overdoing it can negatively impact your SEO. If you use too much of the same keywords, you will trigger a Penguin penalty for over optimization and your pages will not rank.
Site Architecture
While content is the most important aspect of your website, the navigation and user experience is quite important too. You need to design a website that the search engines find easy to crawl and the user finds easy to navigate from page to page. For your users, the best way to do this is by having clean navigation links while a sitemap would help a lot with crawling by the search engines.
Mobile Friendly
In recent times the search engines especially Google have been moving towards a mobile-first index as the number of mobile users exceeds that of the desktop. Given such a dynamic shift in the search engines, websites that are mobile friendly and make for a good user experience on mobile may get better rankings from the search engines as compared to non-mobile optimized websites.
Building internal links to other related pages on your website not only provides contextual relevance on what the target page is about but also on the general topic relevance of the entire website. For instance, if you are writing about how to use an electric breast pump, you can link internally from that page to best electric breast pumps. This tells the search engine that the target page deserves to rank for best electric breast pumps but also that the general topic of your website is breast pumps.
Sub Headings
Subheading serve a dual purpose as they are written for both the search engines and the website's readers. Subheadings improve the user experience as they make it easy for skimmers to skim and find the most interesting parts of content. As for the search engines, subheadings tags such as H1, H2, and H3 make it easy for the search engine to understand the overall context of the content which could make it rank higher.
Meta Description
The meta description is hardly used by any of the major search engines though it is still a critical component for the SEO of a website. The meta description is the little snippet of words the search engines show in the search results so that visitors can understand what the page is about. If you optimize the page so that it gets a better click-through rate, it could benefit your website’s rankings over the competition.
Title Tags
As opposed to the meta description the search engines take into account the title tags. The title tags is the topic sentence of the page that tells the search engine what the content is about. The best way to optimize for the search engines is to include the most important keywords you are targeting in the title tag.
Keyword density
While how many times you use a keyword is one of the components that the search engines use to determine the relevance of a page, overdoing it can negatively impact your SEO. If you use too much of the same keywords, you will trigger a Penguin penalty for over optimization and your pages will not rank.
Site Architecture
While content is the most important aspect of your website, the navigation and user experience is quite important too. You need to design a website that the search engines find easy to crawl and the user finds easy to navigate from page to page. For your users, the best way to do this is by having clean navigation links while a sitemap would help a lot with crawling by the search engines.
Mobile Friendly
In recent times the search engines especially Google have been moving towards a mobile-first index as the number of mobile users exceeds that of the desktop. Given such a dynamic shift in the search engines, websites that are mobile friendly and make for a good user experience on mobile may get better rankings from the search engines as compared to non-mobile optimized websites.
Off-Page SEO
This is the most important aspect that will impact your SEO results more than any other factor even if you have little to no control over these off-page factors. While it is typically hard to gain control over off page factors, there are still some actions you can take to improve the off page for your website.
The following are some important off page factors that will influence your SEO:
Links – This is the most important and popular ways that SEOs use to build authority and relevance for their websites. To make sure that your link earning and building efforts pay off, you need to adhere to certain principles. The most important principle when it comes to building links is that the harder the link is to get, the more powerful it will be. However, building links does not have to be that hard as building valuable content that people love and then promoting it should get you a lot of PR and links from authoritative websites in your vertical.
The following are some important off page factors that will influence your SEO:
Links – This is the most important and popular ways that SEOs use to build authority and relevance for their websites. To make sure that your link earning and building efforts pay off, you need to adhere to certain principles. The most important principle when it comes to building links is that the harder the link is to get, the more powerful it will be. However, building links does not have to be that hard as building valuable content that people love and then promoting it should get you a lot of PR and links from authoritative websites in your vertical.
Trust
Search engines particularly Google work on a concept of trust and authority. The search engines typically rank a website depending on how legitimate and valuable it is deemed to be on the web. The best ways of attaining that trust is by becoming an authority in an area of interest and then earning links from other authoritative sites in the same vertical.
Social
While social may not be a direct search engine ranking factor. It still has its place in off page SEO. By getting your content in front of many social media users who like and share it, you improve the chances that it may be linked to which will improve the authority of the webpage and the website in general.
In Conclusion
While SEO can seem daunting at first glance, understanding the fundamentals will make it all the more easier. Even as there are more than 200 factors that Google takes into account in ranking pages, having an understanding of basic on-page and off-page SEO will put you ahead of many of your competitors. Even though on page contributes less than 50 percent to your SEO efforts, it is still important to make sure you have done it to the best of your ability for best results. As for offsite SEO, writing the best content which is shareable and newsworthy will over time score you links and take care of trust and authority that you need to rank.