What Is SEO?
SEO is shorthand for Search Engine Optimization. In simpler words, SEO is set of activities you implement on your website to make it more search engine friendly. And this occurs when people search for keywords related to your products/services, and your website shows up in Google or other search engines. The more you will show in search engines for your selected keywords, the more attention you will get from your potential customers.
How Does Search Engine Optimization Works?
Search Engines make heavy use of custom programs called “Bots” or “Crawlers”. Those bots actively, crawls millions of web pages every day to be added to their “Index”. Think of this index like big labeled collection of books within a bigger library, where Google search algorithm is the librarian in that case.
After that, Google takes in-mind the ranking factors, and it begin to show up results in an order which is directly influenced by those factors. In essence, the stronger signals will be returned for a specific webpage, the higher chance of appearing in the first result it will be. Simply because, it’s the most relevant result to return to answer the searcher query.
Google uses those ranking factors to measure satisfaction level of the searcher through combining those signals and comparing them against User Experience. The more satisfaction score will be, the higher rankings this page will gain
This is not the case in Paid Advertising, where you pay to the Ads Network to appear higher and higher. SEO, needs a lot of hard work and time to be invested. In the next few sections we will break down that process.
Our SEO Glossary mainly focus on, breaking down all of SEO main branches which carry the most weight in ranking web pages. Example : Content Creation and Keyword research, are two main pillars of Content Optimization. As well as, crawlability, Core Web Vitals and performance all those aspects under the Technical Site Architecture.
As well as, we will list down list of out-of-date and toxic SEO practices that used to drive real results in the past, where search engines were less complicated than today. And how those practices can harm your website those days instead of ranking it. However, SEO pros, used to make big results with those practices, but like i mentioned, back to days.
Also, tapping into controversial SEO key points like : Local SEO, Publisher SEO and Ecommerce SEO. And break down each individually, and spotting the difference between the slight differentials between each SEO workflow type. Whereas, other SEO aspects will be more focused on General SEO best practices that can be applied on any type of publication whether it was : website, Affiliate Ecommerce store or any type of content.
Modern Search Algorithms are mainly built to only return relevant, authoritative and thorough web pages with the most accurate and deep information about the topic. Accordingly, optimizing your website to be an authority for search engines is a must.
How Crucial Is SEO For Marketing?
The big umbrella of Digital Marketing, contains many specialities underneath it. One of those important blocks is SEO. Marketing is directly impacted by SEO, as SEO drives organic traffic to the website through Google, and accordingly more and more brand awareness for the brand/product or service.
Trillions of search queries are conducted by people around the globe.Big set of those keywords, have a big commercial value, they always search online for product prices / recommendations and price comparisons. On of the biggest and most effective marketing channels is SEO. The more stronger your SEO is, the better Search experience you will get.
Due to the rising of modern structural data Like Schema.org. Most search engines now, return the results within the Search Engine Ranking Pages (SERPS). So that, the searcher will find his/her answer without navigating to external website or bouncing outside. Through giving the user the direct and accurate information about the topic.
Features like Rich results and knowledge panels give the end-users real-world information generated by Google, which treats the returned page as a single entity.
Thoughts, SEO is big complex world that need more explanations. But think of it as big game changer in the Digital Marketing ecosystem. Due to the principles and aspects it directly involved in. Based on our discussion above, understanding how search engines works and how that directly relates to SEO. You will find yourself in a better position in understanding how those search algorithms operates underhood.
Implementing all of these SEO knowledge to be applied across : Social Assets, Ecommerce Store, Local Service Provider, or any type of business can give you a superiority and takes the competition ahead.
Types Of SEO
SEO mainly falls into three main and integrated aspects :
- On-Page SEO
- Off-Page SEO
- Technical SEO
On-Page SEO
On-Page SEO refers to optimizations done at the page level to improve the SEO score of the page. In terms of content, Title tags, meta descriptions, headings and image alt tag. All of those elements are important for On-Site SEO, as they draw the relevancy frame in it’s finest form to give Google insights how deep and connected our content is.
Off-Page SEO
Off-Page SEO is responsible for handling SEO activities done outside the website or off-the page level. Good examples of Off-Page SEO are : Backlinks , Mentions, Social Shares and Citations. Mainly, Off-Page SEO, works as relevancy score booster. Which translates into , the stronger your off-page SEO is, the more and more powerful your on-page SEO will be, simple.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is self-explanatory term. In Simple Words, it refers to Technical optimizations done to the website to make it technically reachable from Search engines’ side. Technical SEO , involved in handling Crawling , rendering, indexing and serving the page from Google’s Index. Technical SEO is impacted directly by the server resources.
Common SEO Strategies
Not all SEOs do legitimate SEO activities and vice versa. From that point, Breaking down SEO Strategies into three main and well-known Strategies most of SEOs were doing for years:
- White Hat SEO
- Black Hat SEO
- Gray Hat SEO
White Hat SEO
White Hat SEO is executing on legitimate SEO activities without taking shady shortcuts. That’s White Hat SEO in essence, is to execute on your SEO campaign using only legal SEO tactics where which most SEO Influencers recommend. And Google also, published a paper about their 200+ Ranking Factors.
Black Hat SEO
Quick gains comes with drawbacks. That’s Black Hat SEO in essence, following illegitimate SEO practices for quick ranking and banking. SEOs, used many Black Hat SEO tactics back to days, like : Keyword Stuffing, Link farms, Hidden Text, bad redirects, doorway pages. Those , techniques now are detected by modern search engines.
Gray Hat SEO
It falls between Black and White hat SEO, obviously. Gray Hat SEO, is about ranking your website using techniques that’s neither harmful for your website nor super white hat. Gray Hat SEO, combines between both two types in a more advanced and a little bit safe way than Black Hat SEO.
Search Engine Optimization Vs Search Engine Marketing
There a difference between those closely terms. SEO different from SEM in way that SEO, mainly relies on driving organic traffic from Google. Meanwhile, SEM drives traffic from contextual ads through running campaigns on major search engines. Both uses search engines to drive traffic. But the first one organically and the second through ads.
However, both SEO and SEM experts almost use the same tools to find the best keyword opportunities to work on. SEO expert will optimize landing pages around those keywords and SEM expert will build the Ad Group list using those keywords and upload that list to the desired Ad Network.
Conclusion About SEO
In this short but precise guide we have dived into fundamenals of Search Engine Optimization which is abbrevated into SEO. And how it can impact the performance and growth of your business through driving targeted organic traffic to your website.
Through, optimizing your website for potential keywords directly related to your business, by finding the most profitable and promising keywords to rank in short period of time. In the next few series of Search Engine Optimization.
Services Offered Under SEO
Brandria is a Digital Marketing Agency In Egypt offering : SEO Services In Egypt
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