SEO is an acronym for search engine optimization, which is how websites’ content relevance, technical configuration, and link popularity are optimized. The goal is to make a site more relevant, popular, and findable when users perform searches. Basically SEO is all about improving your google ranking. Which helps your small business increase leads. SEO is just one of the tools in digital marketing. Think of SEO as another member of your sales team.

Google and the other major search engines recommend efforts that benefit a page’s ranking and the user experience by offering content that answers users’ questions. This includes using keywords in meta descriptions, titles, and headlines, descriptive URLs, and employing other best practices. In this beginners’ guide, you’ll learn the fundamentals of SEO.

How the Search Engines Work

Search results on search engine results pages (SERPs) are determined by the search engine’s algorithm, which takes into account the popularity, relevance, and other ranking factors of web pages when it decides which sites to show on a SERP. This is why SEO is an important part of any digital marketing strategy.

Crawling the Web

Google and the other search engines are always looking for page updates. Using crawlers, which follow web links, they report that information to their servers. That’s why it’s essential to make your pages accessible to the crawlers and to include internal links that make it easy to navigate the site. Technical SEO will help you configure a site for optimal crawl-ability.

Site Indexing

When web crawlers obtain information about a site, internal servers analyze every page’s content to discover what they’re about. Suppose Google believes that a page’s information is valuable enough to be included in search results. In that case, it will index that info, keeping it ready for when users search for relevant topics.

Ranking

When a user searches, Google decides which pages they see first. The following factors are considered:

• The words the user included in their query

• User location

• The page’s expertise, authority, trustworthiness, and relevance

• The web page’s link popularity

• The page’s mobile-friendliness and speed

An ongoing SEO challenge is to ensure that a site’s pages outperform others that focus on similar topics, so it can rank higher in the SERPs, no matter how algorithms change.

How to Rank Higher

Since the advent of the internet, search engines have utilized algorithms to decide which sites appear first on results pages. The things the algorithms focus on, however, have changed significantly. Since the dark, dead days of keyword stuffing, the search engines have learned what makes sites informative and relevant. They apply this new knowledge periodically as updates are released.

Site quality is judged according to:

• Relevance to the user’s search terms

• The site’s expertise and reliability

• Site usability

Some factors are on the page, affecting how a website is experienced. Others are off the page, such as other sites and links to yours. Off-page components make sites more reputable and popular, which increases their ranking.

In Closing

Now that you’re a little more familiar with search engine optimization, you can improve a site’s visibility and ranking. It’s simple to get started! By offering valuable content and optimizing your site’s technical aspects, you’ll achieve the results you want.