What is SEO and How Does it Work

Wondering what is SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.

And if you are here, welcome to the wild and wacky world of SEO! Where algorithm updates reign supreme and keyword stuffing is a thing of the past.

In this article, I am here to demystify the mysterious world of search engine optimization and help you climb to the top of Google’s rankings.

Why SEO is Important for every Business

Imagine every time someone searches for a product or service you sell, the name of your business (site link) shows up at the top of the search results page (or on Google). This is what SEO do for you. Search Engine Optimization helps companies to be more visible in search results.

Companies are reaching new audiences daily with the help of the internet. Customers can type in to search for anything they are looking for, and they will get an assorted list of relevant businesses in seconds on their search engine results.

However, the order of the companies in the list can always be changed with SEO. SEO helps individuals like you with that.

You can optimize your website for any search engine like Google, Bing, Yahoo, Safari, etc. Search engines follow a specific algorithm, and understanding the algorithm and figuring out a strategy based on that is what really SEO is about.

If you are looking for professional SEO services in India to rank higher on the search engine result pages, feel free to contact us.

What is SEO?

As already discussed, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. This efficient digital marketing strategy strives to increase a particular website’s position in any search engine’s results.

What is SEO in Digital Marketing?

Every search engine works a certain algorithm that considers hundreds of different factors to rank a website on its SERP (Search Engine Result Page). Google especially uses more than 200 factors.

As the number of factors are too many, you need to have tried and tested methods to win SEO game. Therefore, businesses can employ certain methods to make their website stand atop the search results.

It is very important to understand how SEO functions for you to be able to modulate these factors. Once you learn how SEO works, you can use tactics like creating specific content, in-depth keyword research, page-speed optimization, and other factors to make your website stand out and stand atop the results.

Sometimes you can pay for the ranking to let the search engine do it automatically.

Although you must, however, understand the basic difference between paid and organic search.

Organic search primarily includes the traditional way of optimizing your website with well-defined SEO strategies, which increases the chances of your website rising on search engines.

What is the difference between paid search and organic search?

We have compiled a few important yet fundamental differences between paid and organic searches, and here are the reasons –

1. Search Position -All websites with organic search positions will always be below-paid positions.
2. Time – A business with a paid search gets instant results. The results are so instantaneous that sometimes it only takes a few minutes. When it is an organic search, it can take longer, and sometimes it can even take months.
3. Payment – In paid search, as the name suggests, it is a paid service. You pay using a PPC (pay-per-click) or CPM (cost-per-mile) method. In a paid search, you do not have to depend on organic traffic on your website. With paid search, you can pay to increase traffic to your website. However, you do not pay anything for traffic in an organic search.
4. Return on Investment – Calculating your ROI in paid search is much easier. Google alone provides more data related to keywords than Google Analytics ever will. Although ROI can stagnate with paid searches, it can also decline. ROI is more difficult to calculate in organic searches, but ROI in organic searches often increases over time, and in the long term, organic searches offer a good ROI.

What are The Similarities Between Paid and Organic Search?

Paid searches and organic searches have a distinct set of differences, but they also converge and share various similarities –

1. Keywords – Every search users do, to get good results, needs a keyword they type out in their search engines. It does not matter whether you are targeting paid or organic search; you must be very extensive with your keyword research.
2. Landing Pages – Both types of searches need you to have landing pages. For paid searches, your landing page can be the same as your organic searches, or you can have a different landing page for your paid searches.
3. Traffic – Both types of searches incorporate the user’s intent in their strategy. Most users are in an active mindset where they would take certain actions if the information in the searches is relevant enough.

How does SEO work for Search Engines?

Search Engine Companies, after intensive research, formulate ranking factors that are responsible for a site’s position on the results. Understanding what is a search engine is and how it works is a part of understanding how SEO works in digital marketing.

Although, we are moving ahead of ourselves. Before a search engine can figure out the right and relevant content for a search, it must first crawl and index it.

CRAWLING >>>> INDEXING >>>>> RANKING

What is Crawling?

Crawling is a process through which new and old websites can be discovered and rediscovered by search engines.

They use certain specific links to unearth new and old websites. This is one of the many reasons internal linking and backlinking are extremely important to SEO.

What is Indexing?

Everything that the crawlers crawl out and through indexing is efficiently filtered. Only some things that are crawled out are useful or relevant. If a crawled webpage is considered appropriate enough, that particular website is added to that search engine’s index. This index will be used in the last of the ranking stages.

Here are some of the leading causes why a website might not be indexed-

• If the content is very similar to another website and that can be duplicitous.
• If the content has too much unnecessary information.
• It was not crawled out
• If the website needed proper inbound links.

What is Ranking?

This is the third step, and it is the most important step.

The website must be first crawled out and then indexed, and only then can it be ranked. More than 200 ranking factors are taken into consideration by the search engine. All these factors fall under the three kinds of optimization.

Ordering and Ranking Results

Google Hummingbird is the search algorithm that Google uses that decides the process that must be implemented to order and rank the search engine results. In addition to Hummingbird, Google uses a machine-learning search engine sub-algorithm called RankBrain. This is the answer to how to do google algorithm work.

Understanding RankBrain is a very crucial step to SEO.

How does RankBrain Work?

Here we have briefly tried to explain what RankBrain does –

1. 1. If RankBrain finds something like a word or a phrase, it will use A.I. to understand it better by linking it up with similar search queries.
2. It helps Google comprehend and understand these queries by turning the keywords into familiar topics and ideas. Even if the questions are unfamiliar and common, they can still provide better search results.
3. RankBrain does not base its results on how keyword-optimized a particular site is. It ranks websites better, which provides better user satisfaction and that provides the user with what they are looking for.

If you are designing an SEO strategy for your brand or your client, you must know how to utilize the abilities of RankBrain to the best of your ability. There are three very useful ways you can do this –

Optimize for keywords that consist of 2-3 words

Optimize your website so users can click on the titles and descriptions. A click-through rate is the percentage of people who, after seeing your website in the results, have clicked on your website. When the click-through rate is higher, RankBrain ranks your website higher.

Optimize the website, so people spend more time on your page. Also, you must design the website so visitors do not leave your webpage after only viewing it once.

If You are Looking for SEO Services in Delhi NCR, Contact us now!

Three Determining Pillars of SEO

It would be best if you had a well-developed SEO strategy that pertains solely to your business. Finding the right strategy for a company is a skill. Optimizing the marketing strategy that can make your business come up at the top of the searches is a rare skill. SEO protocols keep changing constantly, and their dynamic nature is why no definitive formula can ensure positive results.

That is why you might need a professional SEO agency for your business.

However, there are these three core factors that remain the same –

1. Technical SEO – What is Technical SEO?

Generally, people associate SEO with just content and keywords. It is not.

To understand technical SEO, you must first understand crawling, indexing, and ranking. Technical SEO involves the process, besides content creation, that makes a website easily crawlable so that it can be indexed and then ranked.

The webpage appears differently to the search engine than it appears to you. A webpage has various elements like text, images, videos, colours, ads, links, etc. For a search engine, the entire website is text.

This is why a good SEO strategy must understand this.

Here is a list of some important factors that directly affect the technical optimization of a website. The technical SEO checklist, according to technical SEO experts, includes –

Website Navigation and Links

Since the search engine can only find the website in an all-text format, it uses certain links to look for other content that is related to yours. Thus, you must always set the navigation and connections to be text-only.

Simple URL structure

Search engines do not find verbose and lengthy sentence structures attractive. So, always make your URLs short. Never include more words than necessary in the URL beside the main keyword.

Page Speed

Search engines calculate the time it takes for a page to load. Many factors can affect the load time, e.g. Image Size. You can always use Google’s Page Insight Tool to look for ways to improve your pages.

Dead Links

A dead link is a link, when accessed, takes the user to a page that does not exist. Then, a broken redirect helps the search engine figure out a resource that might not exist anymore. Both make an extremely poor user experience and prevent search engines from indexing your website.

Sitemap and Robots.txt Files

A sitemap is a specific file that contains all the URLs present on your webpage as a list. Search engines use these to identify the right pages to crawl and index. A Robot.txt file, on the contrary, helps search engines determine what content to not index. This comes in handy when you search for something; you do not get something unnecessary, like the policies of the product or service you are looking for.

Create both to speed up the crawling and the indexing of your content.

Plagiarised Content

To prevent this from happening, writers can always use any plagiarism-checking tool available in multitudes online.

If search engines find plagiarised content, it will not be indexed, and sometimes you can even get your website blocked.

2. On-Page SEO optimization – What is On-Page SEO?

Everything associated with making the content provided by the website to make it relevant falls under on-page SEO. Keyword research and using them is one of the most important aspects of on-page SEO checklist optimization. Various content management systems mainly do this.

Some examples of reliable content management systems are WordPress, Wix, Drupal, Joomla, Magneto, Shopify, and Expression Engine.

Every time a user opens a website, they look for information on them. Your content can be in any form – text, blogs, webpage, videos, product recommendations, and more.

Content is important because –

1. Users are always looking for content; the more you publish, the better your chances for greater visibility in search engine searches.
2. Search engines look through the content and equate a relationship between it and the user’s search query.

This gives us a clear understanding of what SEO optimisation is and how important content is for SEO.

The Factors that Affect the On-page SEO Analysis

Keywords

Every website has a specific audience. This is important to remember; therefore, keywords become an important part of SEO. When people search for something specific, they use words from a certain assortment of words.

E.g. If you are looking for hospitals near you, your search might include words like a hospital, medical help, medical emergency, etc. it will certainly not have words like restaurants or shopping mall. An SEO strategy must deeply understand the correct keywords about a particular topic. If SEO consists of the right keywords, it automatically increases the chance of our website reaching the right audience.

This is what keyword research is all about in SEO.

SEO work begins with creating an assorted list of all the common phrases people use while looking for something particular. These people later become your potential customers. You know what they want, and you can deliver it; here, SEO causes the link between the two.

How to do Keyword Optimisation

There are certainly various ways in which you can do keyword optimization. You can add keywords in –

1. Title: Include the main keyword close to the title’s beginning. Google focuses heavily on the title.
2. URLs: The main web address must include the main keyword. Suppose you can not add anything else at all.
3. H1 Tags: Every SEO company uses a content management system; by default, the H1 tag displays the title page. Make sure this setting is never altered.
4. First 100 words: Suppose your content includes the major keywords in its first 100 words. In that case, the search engine will know that this website shows relevant information, which is a definitive factor in having a higher search history ranking.
5. Meta Title & Meta-Description Tags: Search engines display their listings using these two elements. The meta title is generally the title for the search listing. The meta description typically contains little information for the little space below it.
6. Image File Names and ALT Tags: Every picture or any other graphic material used by the website is not seen as an image that is used but as the title of the image file. Ensure that among all the images used, at least one has the file name the same as the major keyword. The ALT tag is the display of the text browser, and it is used instead of an image primarily for people with some form of visual impairment. ALT tag resides in the image code, and all search engines use it to calculate the website’s relevancy.
7. Semantic Keywords: Besides using the main keyword, you must also use similar keywords, which are generally synonyms. Search engines also employ these to check the relevance of your website.

Non-Keyword Related On-page SEO Optimisation Factors

On-page SEO optimization does more than incorporate keywords into your content. There are other factors as well –

1. External Links – You must always add relevant external links in your content that lead the customer to other relevant sources to learn more about the topic. When these external links are relevant, every search engine considers that while ranking because this practice adds greatly to enrich the user’s experience.
2. Internal Links – These help search engines find and crawl other site pages. With the help of internal links, the search engine deduces the semantic relationship shared between the pages to access the page’s relevance.
3. Content and limits – Long range generally rank better, which means it has more information. If the content is formatted correctly, it will ensure that the user spends more time on the website, which directly adds to the user’s time on the page.
4. Multimedia – typically, from a search engine’s perspective, more than the presence of images is needed to ensure a high ranking. Multimedia makes the user think that the website is of a higher quality. Media makes them stay longer on the website.

These factors directly influence the on-page SEO techniques. All these on-page SEO factors must be taken into consideration.

3. Off-Page SEO? – What is Off-Page SEO?

Off-page SEO optimization ensures a higher rank when making the website more popular.

This method helps you to better the rank of your website through processes unrelated to the enhancement of the site. This mostly includes backlinks (trust votes), which help improve your website’s reputation.

Off-page SEO includes the following factors –

Backlinks

Backlinks are one of the most important off-page SEO factors. These are references that refer to your content on other websites.

Both on-page and off-page SEO are important for a marketing strategy. A search engine would use a website’s total number of backlinks–the quality and quantity–to check for a website’s authority. The primary reason behind this is that a web admin would only reference good websites, not ones with insufficient information.

Factors affecting the quality of the links and SEO off-page optimisation are –

1. Popularity – If there is a link in your content that belongs to a domain that a search engine thinks of having authority, then the rank of your website would automatically rank higher. This is one of the major off-page SEO services.
2. Relevance – Links from a domain that provide links from websites that offer the same information rank it higher.
3. Domain Trust – Like popularity, search engines also look for the safety of a particular website. When the links used are from websites users trust, the ranking would be high.
4. Bounce Rate – This is the number of people who accessed your website and left immediately after accessing it. More the rate lesser is your website’s ranking.

What is Link Building?

The process of producing more backlinks is called link building. Making a useful link is creative work that needs a lot of stratification. Only people with a great understanding of SEO can create a well-exercised link building.

Some of the most effective ways to build links which include the primary aspect of most off-page activities of SEO, are –

1. Editorial links – Include editorial backlinks because these are generated from websites that reference the context you have put on your website.
2. Outreach – Here, you have to contact other websites to get links. You can contact them by mailing them about the amazing content that you have produced and tell them. If these companies find your content relevant, they can share it.
3. Guest Posting – Guest Posts are blogs that various websites put on third-party websites to attract new customers. In turn, the third-party website allows you to put one or two links to your website in the post.
4. Profile links – Many websites often provide a chance to create a connection. One of the most common ways to do this is while making your online profile; you can add the link to your website. Not all websites can do the trick, but most do.
5. Competition analysis – You can always analyze the competition backlink to look for ways in which you can recreate their links as well.

Monitoring SEO Results

SEO strategy includes looking into the following factors, also called SEO KPIs (Key performance indicators) –

1. Organic Traffic to a website
2. Increase in organic traffic
3. keyword positions (split into branded and non-branded terms)
4. Organic traffic conversions
5. The bounce rate and the average time are on the page.
6. The best landing pages get organic traffic.
7. The number of pages indexed
8. Link expansion (including new and lost links)

What is Local SEO?

What we have learned until now has been solely based on trying to get your website higher in search results. However, local businesses must always focus more on getting more customers in their area. Therefore, every SEO strategist needs to know and learn about their local searches for their product.

Local SEO must be a priority because around 46% of all Google searches directly attribute to local businesses. Customers look for various companies and vendors and generally prefer a local brand. 72% of all users who searched for a business end up visiting the business page within the first 24 hours after exploring.

You may be wondering if Local SEO differs from general SEO, which we have discussed all this while in this article.

Yes and No.

Search engines follow the same tenets for optimizing global and local ranking lists. However, each search engine tries to rank the list in a manner that also takes the location of the business and the search under consideration.

If you are looking for Local SEO Services in Delhi NCR, contact us.

Importance of Local SEO

Local SEO is important because local search results look very different than global searches in the following ways –

1. Local searches appear only when the search is location specific, e.g. ATMs near me.
2. The results are always based on a particular location.
3. Specific information relevant to a group of people for a particular location only shows in Local SEO (and it makes sense!).
4. Searches based on location are mostly done on smartphones; therefore, Local SEO targets smartphone users.

Local Search Ranking Factors

The technique of Local SEO is slightly different from Global SEO, and there are some specific factors that you must always keep in mind –

1. Local SEO considers the distance between the business and the user because most local searches include “near me”.
2. Local SEO focuses more on the Company’s name, address, and phone number through which they can be contacted. This is generally called the NAP.
3. Search engines do more than check the page’s authority through links. Reviews and Citations related to your businesses are also very important because they come directly from the user.
4. You must have your Company listed in Google my Business because this also affects the rank.

What is Black-Hat SEO?

If you look into SEO, you will inadvertently come across Black Hat SEO. Before we start talking about it, know, despite its lure, never use it. Typically Black Hat SEO generates a one-way ticket to getting a penalty.

some of the common Black-Hat SEO strategies are –

1. They are stuffing more keywords in a limited space.
2. Cloaking or hiding keywords in the page’s code so that users cannot see them, but search engines can.
3. Buying links externally.

If Black Hat SEO leads to penalization, you must wonder why anyone must use it.

The need to use Black Hat SEO emerges because it takes considerable time to rank your website from a search engine’s end. Black Hat SEO makes the process very easier and faster. Link building is extensive work; therefore, buying links is sometimes more feasible.

Getting your website back from the blacklist is difficult, and sometimes the charge is not too affordable.

Conclusion

In conclusion, SEO is crucial for any business or website looking to reach a wider audience and establish a strong online presence. It can be a complex and ever-evolving field. Still, by understanding how it works and staying up to date on industry changes, anyone can improve their website’s visibility and reach their target audience.

However, we must also remember that SEO is not just about climbing the search engine ranks; it’s about providing value to your audience and building trust and connection with the people searching for your solutions. It’s about understanding the human behind the search query and giving them the information they need to decide.

So let us not forget the humanity behind SEO; let us not forget that the ultimate goal is not just to be on top of the search engine results but to provide value and service to those searching for it.

Frequently Asked Questions