What is SEO?
The letters SEO are an acronym for the term ‘Search Engine Optimization’. This is the process through which different websites end up sitting at the top of the search engines when you search for something that could be on a thousand other websites as well. In simple words, SEO is the procedure through which websites improve their ranking in a search engine.
How SEO works, and why it is important:
There are a number of websites like Facebook, or Microsoft whose brand names are enough to get them into the first pages of search results, other websites employ different ways to get into the second or third pages, because no one really ever goes past the first few pages of any search engine. SEO is important in bringing high traffic to your website. More hits on the search pages means that more people will visit your website, and this would ultimately add up to the profit in your businesses or whatever products you may be selling or advertising on your websites.
There are many strategies people use to get a higher SEO ranking, some of the most common and effective ones are briefly described as follows:
Headers, and URLs of any page account for a higher SEO ranking as the search engine looks for the commonality between the keywords and the titles and headers of the webpages. Thus, if the title, or the URL of a website matches the keyword, that website is automatically given a higher SEO ranking.
Back-Links are all those URLs linking your website to others. These include reference links, for example, on Wikipedia. Generally, higher the number of back-links, higher is the ranking of your website.
Writing SEO content: When you search for a keyword, the search engine tries to find websites that have a higher density of that particular word in their content. For example, if you search for ‘tennis’, there’d be thousands of websites where the word ‘tennis’ would be used but you will be given names of those websites where the word’s density is greater.
Multimedia elements like graphics or videos are something everyone prefers, and this is something the major search engines know. Therefore, they suggest websites with multimedia elements more often than plain websites.
Regular updates means regular addition of new information, up-to-date facts and news, which is something everyone prefers. Thus, websites employing regular updates are given a higher ranking.
Websites need to follow some strict SEO services in order to complete their optimization. These include both on page and off page services.
On Page Services:
These services include the use of keywords and relevant content in the web pages, and making them more ‘result oriented’. As mentioned before, uses of keywords in titles and increasing keyword density by using keywords in titles, tags, descriptions etc. are the different on-page services.
Off Page Services:
These are services that take place outside a website to make the pages more user-friendly. These include link building strategies which help in maximizing the amount of traffic that comes to a website. Submitting the website to various search engines, including link sharing options are types of off page services.
Having a website appear on the first page of a search engine is a major factor in making your website accessible and preferable, and both on page and off page services account for the optimization of a website in major search engines.
