What is SEO / Search Engine Optimization? [Complete Guide]

What is Search Engine Optimization or SEO

Search engine optimization or SEO is the method to increase the online visibility of a website or webpage on the natural search results pages of search engines when visitors search for specific keywords. This method is also known as the organic method or unpaid method.
All major search engines like google, bing, yahoo has organic search results. The priority of search results on these search engines is calculated by search engine algorithms. Each search engines have different search engine algorithms to rank their websites.

How SEO helps you?

SEO helps your website to get more quality and quantity traffic to your website or webpage. If you optimize your webpage for a specific keyword, then those who search for the specific keyword will find your webpage address on the search engine results page. It will help you to get more visitors to your website. The best thing in Search Engine Optimization is if you know the basics of search engine optimization (SEO), it is completely free of cost!

How SEO Works?

We discussed that every search engines have their own search engine algorithms to rank a webpage. Search engines will update their search engine algorithms continues to give quality results to the users.
Search engines will crawl every page on the web by using search engine bots. By crawling on the web, search engines will get the idea about the content of the web page and the quality of the content. Also search engine bots will check that, will this webpage satisfies the quality guidelines of the search engine algorithms. If a webpage satisfies the quality guidelines of a search engine, then that webpage will rank high for the specific keyword on the search engine results page(SERP).
The search engine can easily find the spamming activities on the web pages to get high page rank. If search engines find any unlawful activities on the webpage the search engines may remove the web pages from the search results.

Two Types of Search Engine Optimization (on page SEO and Off-page SEO)

There are two types of methods in SEO to rank a webpage on organic search results. On page SEO and Off page SEO are the two types of search engine optimization techniques.
On-page optimization is the process of optimizing different parts of the website or optimizing individual web pages on the website to get high search engine rankings and more organic search traffic.
Off-page optimization is the technique takes on a website to improve the search engine ranking of a website.

Click here to read On-page SEO Techniques
Click here to read Off-page SEO Techniques

Main SEO Affecting Factors

There are many on-page and off-page SEO techniques that affect the search engine ranking of a website. In this topic, we discuss the main on-page and off-page SEO factors that affect the search engine rank.

keywords:

Keywords play an important role in the search engine rank of your website. Give SEO friendly content on your webpage. But don’t overuse the keywords. Use keywords in the title, meta description, URL, headings and subheadings on the webpage, first paragraph on the website.

Use header tags:

Use h1 tag for the main heading of your webpage. And also use h2 or h3 tags for the subheadings. don’t forget to add keywords to header tags.

Include Multimedia Content:

Add multimedia contents on your webpage. It will help to increase the authenticity of your content and it will also help to increase user interaction on the webpage. Try to add text, images, videos, tables, and infographic images on your webpage.

Mobile Friendly:

Make your content and website design mobile friendly. As we know most of the visitors to any websites are from smartphones or tablets. So your website must be mobile friendly and responsive to attract mobile users.

Anchor Tags:

Use anchor tags on your content to give internal links to different parts of your website. Internal links on anchor tags will help to increase user interaction with your website.

Image Optimization:

Image optimization is also important in Search Engine Optimization. Use alt tags for your images. It will help the crawlers to understand the content of your image.
Social media buttons: Use social media buttons on the website to keep your visitors in touch with you.

Content:

The quality and quantity of content on a webpage have an important role in search engine results page ranking of a website. Add more content to your webpage to increase authenticity and user interaction of your webpage.

Click here to read Top 10 SEO Tips for Content Writers

Social Networking Sites:

Be active on all popular social media websites to interact with your customers. Social media are the biggest source of traffic for almost all websites. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+ are some of the popular social networking websites in the world. Being active in social media also helps you to keep your customers live with your updates.

Guest Blogging:

Guest blogging is the best way to get quality backlinks to your website. It will increase the popularity and authenticity of your website. So the website will get high search results rank. Search for the guest blogging websites on your niche and post quality content to promote your business with a backlink to your website.

Comments on blogs:

Visit blogs on your topic and comment on that blogs with links to your website.

Forum Participation:

Participate or forum websites on your niche to get quality backlinks from forum websites.

Search Engine Submission:

Submit your website to all major search engines. That will help your website to list easily on that search engines.

Participate in Social Bookmarking Websites:

Social bookmarking websites are the best source of traffic. Participate and share your content on popular social bookmarking websites like StumbleUpon, Digg, and Reddit.

Local Listings:

List your business on local business directories like google local business to get more local traffic to your website.

Future of SEO

SEO is one of the fastest growing industry. The importance of being online is increasing day by day and being visible in online is also an important factor. SEO is important for every website to be visible to their customers. The methods and technologies of SEO are updating day by day by search engines. It is going to be one of the important factors of every business. Today we can see in the market that the amount spending by companies for SEO is growing day by day. The affecting factors of SEO also change with the algorithm changes. All search engine algorithms trying to give the main importance to the user experience of a website. So in future of SEO, with content and keywords, the user experience is also going to be an important factor in SEO.

SEO as a Career

As we discussed SEO is the fastest developing industry, So the career opportunities in this field are also increasing day by day. Having a well-designed website is not an important thing now, but having an SEO friendly website is more important. There is a great demand for SEO executives in every organization because every organization needs to be active and visible in online. Also, the SEO experts can earn more because there is high demand for SEO professional but the resource is very less now.

What is SEO / Search Engine Optimization? [Complete Guide]

What is Search Engine Optimization or SEO

How SEO helps you?

How SEO Works?

Two Types of Search Engine Optimization (on page SEO and Off-page SEO)