What is Search Engine Optimization?
SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is a set of processes aiming to increase a website’s visibility on search engines. This is done with the purpose of increasing traffic to your website in an organic way. The processes mentioned above are all ways to satisfy the search needs of your target customer base. This may be through keywords, writing specific content, or even making your website more user-friendly.
What are the types of SEO?
SEO can be classified into different types depending on what process is being carried out. They have been listed below:
- On-site/ On-page SEO:
As the name suggests, this type of SEO involves making changes to your website directly. This is done by working on your website URL (making it easier to look up), meta titles, meta descriptions, keywords, images, and headers. There are around five different processes that come under this type of SEO – keyword research, putting out quality content using SEO keywords, internal linking, metadata optimization, and image optimization.
The first two processes are pretty self-explanatory – finding out what keywords will bring you the most traffic and using them in any content you publish on your site with the aim of ranking better.
The next three processes are a bit harder. Internal linking is a process in which you link other pages on your website to each other. This will allow any visitor to see that your website offers a lot of information and they may go to check it out if they choose to do so.
Metadata is basically what tells a search engine what can be found on your website. It plays an important role when it comes to ranking. It can be broadly divided into two and that is the meta title and the meta description. The meta title is what shows up on the search engine results page as the blue text. The meta description is the line of text below the blue line. It gives a brief outline of the contents of the webpage. So it is important to include keywords in both your meta title and description so that the search engine will recognize it and rank it higher.
Image optimization is adding images to the content you put out. This will not only help your chances of ranking it will also help make your page more attractive to visitors. Using images will also allow your webpage to appear in the image search section of a search engine.
- Off-page/off-site SEO:
As the name suggests, this type of SEO focuses on the activities that can be done away from the website that will help your website rank higher. There are two main reasons why this is also important – it will not only help your website gain trust and authority but it will also impact the way your site is viewed in terms of popularity and relevance. This type of SEO can be broadly divided into two – link-related and non-link-related.
- Link-related: This process involved building back-links which is the most important part of off-page SEO. This is because search engines use backlinks to determine the quality of the content on a website which in turn affects the website ranking on a SERP.
- Non-link-related: While link-building forms a major part of what off-page SEO is, some activities are important but are not link-related. This typically involved social media marketing. You can get traffic to your website by using other websites and having them refer you.
These are the two most common types of activities in off-page SEO but it can also include activities like guest blogging, influencer marketing, and linked and unlinked brand mentions.
- Technical SEO:
This type of SEO should be combined with the previous types for a well-rounded strategy when it comes to SEO. While on-site SEO focuses on the type of content you put on your website and how it can be used to help your website rank, technical SEO focuses on the non-content aspects of the website. This is mainly the readability of your website. Trying to improve readability will help give a search engine a good user experience. This in turn will help convince the search engine that your website is of a higher quality which will help your website rank higher. This can be done by making sure that your website has a low page load speed, is mobile-friendly, and is well structured.
These are the main types of SEO and they should all be implemented to ensure that your website ranks high on a SERP.
What are the benefits of SEO?
There are quite a few benefits to SEO which we will go through below:
- It brings traffic to your website in an organic way.
- It is a cost-effective way to increase your online presence.
- It ensures that your brand gains more visibility.
- It allows you to get ahead of your competition by making sure your website ranks better.
- It makes your website easier for mobile users to visit.
- By taking the time to ensure that you put out quality content, trust in your website will increase.
- In the case that you have a physical store, a brand website will ensure that people will be able to find your store and hence you will get more physical traffic.
- It helps you understand what it is that your customer base is looking for. With the help of keywords, you will be able to understand what your customers want and hence cater to them.
There are a lot more benefits that you will be able to experience as you implement a good SEO strategy and see the results for yourself.
Conclusion:
Now that you have made it down here, we hope that you have gained a basic understanding of what SEO is and how it can be used for your website. We have also talked about the types of SEO and how they can be used to help your brand.
