Search Engine Optimization Explained

SEO What?

SEO – everyone wants to do it, everyone seems to know everything about it, but almost no one really knows how to do it right. If you have no idea what SEO is, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. In other words, SEO is trying to get your website to rank or appear in the search engines like Google, Bing, Firefox, and Internet Explorer (who’s still using IE though?). And if you’re reading this post, chances are you own a website, or plan to have one. You’ve heard about SEO, and want to do it, yet you don’t know where to start. No worries, I’m here to tell you you’re not alone in your SEO journey. In this post, we’ll demystify SEO, and steps on implementing SEO for your site.

SEO Explained

To really understand what Search Engine Optimization or SEO is and what it is used for, you have to get an idea of how search engines work. Search engines like Google are like a big phone book or encyclopedia of websites up on the World Wide Web. Search engines have what they call spiders or crawlers (complicated algorithms) that indexes all the information in the website. So that when you search for “top 10 places to visit” or anything you’d like to search for, search engines like Google can provide you the most relevant and correct results based on your query. Mind you, search engines are smart, and churn out results specific to you, and your location, interests, past search results, and more.

You get the big picture. So, how do you make your website appear in the results page of Google? The answer lies in Search Engine Optimization.

And why bother doing SEO in the first place? Because turning up in the search engine results will help you improve your online presence, and help you get more customers and sales. So, what are the steps you can do today to start or improve your search engine rankings? Here are five tips:

5 SEO Tips

1. Keywords

Decide on what keywords you would like to rank for. For example, if you have a pastry business, you might decide to rank for “best cakes”, which is an example of a short-tail keyword. It’s harder to rank with common short-tail keywords because you bet there are dozens, and even thousands of businesses around the world trying to rank for the same keywords. A better option is to choose to rank for long-tail keywords which is commonly composed of three or more words. In our example, it can be “best chocolate cake in San Francisco CA,” which is more specific and targeted.

2. Improve your meta tags
Your site’s meta tags — meta titles and meta descriptions— are the ones that briefly explain to the search engine crawler what your site or page is all about. For WordPress websites, you can install and use Yoast SEO, which makes it easier for you to place meta tags in your website pages. Having optimized meta tags on your site will help you rank in the search engines.

3. Put relevant blog posts
Having a well-performing blog will also help you rank in the search engines. When your blog has a lot of views, shares, and comments, search engines will perceive your site as more credible. In today’s age, you have a lot of competitors also competing for your customer’s attention. So, how do you gain the upper hand? It is in providing the most value to your customers. And one of the ways that you can provide value is by sharing information that is helpful to your target customers.

4. Backlinks
Backlinks has long been known to be one of the key ranking factors. When a website with a higher domain authority links back to your site, search engines will more likely perceive your website as more credible and trust-worthy.

5. Power your social media
Social media is one of the best channels for you to reach out to new and existing customers. It is no wonder then that social media marketing can be one of your best SEO strategies. You can drive more traffic and conversions to your website with a well-oiled Facebook business page that has a lot of engagement, posts, and likes from your target users.

Wrapping Up

These are just some of the tips that you can implement today to improve your search engine rankings. Obviously, there are a lot of factors that come into play for your website to rank. And if you’re lost or confused with all these SEO jargons, it’s best to get a reputable SEO company such as ours to get you started on the right direction.