Find out what SEO is and what it is for!
SEO, Search Engine Optimization, is a set of optimization strategies for websites, web pages, or blogs in order to position them at the top of search engines’ organic results.
Search engines are now an indispensable part of our lives. Whether it is Google, Bing, Yahoo! or other search engines, they are who we turn to for answers to our needs.
What company wouldn’t like to appear, organically, at the top of search results when someone searches for a service or product that is the same or similar to yours?
Being in the first results makes you able to be the first solution to the problem/need of the person who has used that search engine. However tempting it may be, appearing at the top of search engine results is not such an easy task, and not all businesses know what SEO is or what it is for.
With thousands of web pages being published every day, it gets harder and harder to make our website stand out from all the competition.
So what is the secret to appear at the top of the Searches? It’s SEO!
So what is SEO? As the name implies, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a set of strategies inside the website (on-page) and outside it (off-site) that allows search engines to understand exactly what our site contains and place it high in the results for certain keywords.
These keywords are searches that people do daily on Google to find a solution to their need/problem. So SEO in a very simple way, is to optimize the website so that it appears first when our target audience searches for something related to our product, service.
For example, in a running shoe online store, SEO will optimize the website so that when someone googles running shoes, the store will be one of the first choices on Google.
What do these SEO strategies consist of?
Very simply, SEO strategy is done in two parts: On-page and OFF-page.
The on-page SEO strategy consists of optimizing the website’s internal content for search engines. This involves leveraging various content to make it stand out and certain keywords, thus going through the optimization of various elements, such as for example:
- Page content (e.g. description of products/services)
- Title and Meta description
- Heading Tags
- Images
- URLs
- Rich Snippets
- Website Speed
Off-page SEO strategy, refers to a set of strategies taken outside our website. These strategies are based on creating authority to our domain, so that it is relevant in Google’s eyes. This is achieved through backlinks.
Backlinks happen when some website outside our domain has one or more links directing to ours. The new algorithm updates have made it so that Google not only looks at the amount of backlinks, but also at the authority of those websites, divesity, context and others.
How to implement an SEO strategy?
If you want to implement in a serious, structured and successful way an SEO strategy you should resort to professionals in the field, be they digital agencies with SEO services freelancer or hire a specialist, because they know what SEO is and what it implies.
These professionals will first do a market study looking at the main keywords your target audience is looking for, looking at volume, indexing difficulty, traffic and related words. They will also analyze your competitors’ strategy and understand which organic keywords are generating the most organic visits (Keyword Reverse Engineering).
After this survey work the professionals will move on to optimizing your website.
Summary: What are the benefits of SEO?
Although it is a rather technical and complicated strategy for some, having a strong SEO will lead to that:
- Improve your website positioning in search engines
- Improves the experience within the website
- Attracts quality traffic that is closer to the buying process
- Decreases acquisition costs
- Provides notoriety and authority
- Set your business apart from the competition
- It implies that there is a value content strategy
Do you have any questions about what SEO is? Talk here with us!
Helena Santos, Social Networking & SEO/SEM Manager