Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide: What is SEO and how does it work?

Are you finally ready to tackle Search Engine Optimization and increase traffic to your website? Well, you better be updated with our latest blog series in the coming weeks. In this article, we will cover what is SEO and how you can use it to increase traffic in your websites. 

If you own, manage and promote online content, this is for you. By following the tips in this series you can easily add thousands of visitors to your website. SEO is about making modifications to part of your website that can increase user experience and search result performance. It is about helping search engines understand and present your content.

What does SEO really mean?

SEO is the process of making your site better for search engines to find your website, especially Google. Sure, there are other search engines like Bing, Yahoo and others but 90% of searches are done on Google. This is why it is so important that your website is first in Google ranking.

Basically, search engines examine the web to find pages and index them in their catalog. Google stores all web pages that it knows about in its index. The index entry for each page describes the content and location (URL) of that page. Optimized websites land on the first page of the organic results. Typically these are the top 10 websites who did a good job of telling that these pages answer the particular keyword search. Fewer than 10% of people will actually click on the next page. If they don’t find their particular query on the first page, they would likely adjust their keyword. 

And why is SEO so important? Of these 10 top organic search websites, the first three will get 70% of clicks. The first position usually gets 35% - 40% clicks, the second one will get 15% - 20%, and the third position will get around 10%.

So, how do you make sure that your website lands on the first page? Here are the two important things to consider in optimizing your website.

1. Make sure your website is relevant – Your website should be exactly what the searcher is looking for. It is not just about competitive keywords but also about quality of information.
   According to Google’s own search quality ratings, they index websites based on the purpose of the page, content quality and amount, website information and user interaction with the page. Google algorithm shows searchers the most relevant, high-quality results related to what they’re looking for. The most relevant are shown first, with the rest shown over successive pages.

2. Make sure your website is useful – Make sure that when a searcher clicked on your website, the information that they are looking for is easily found. If your page cannot provide the answer to their query, they will click back and look for the answer somewhere else. Your website should be able to answer queries in a meaningful way and easier for the users to find.

Now you know some of the basics of SEO and how it increase traffic in your website, in the next blog we will discuss two main ways to work on SEO on your website: the On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO and how to use it properly in your website. The requirements keep changing in line with the latest developments, and if you want your website to go from unseen to the top list, then you have to be in the know.