I’m going to assume you used a search engine to get to this page. Interestingly, it wasn’t as random as you might have thought. The search engine you used didn’t randomly pick this page and hoped it would answer your questions about what search engine optimization is and how it works.
What is Search Engine Optimization?
In simple words, search engine optimization (often referred to as SEO) is how you increase your site’s visibility during an online search. It goes without saying that the more visibility your page gets, the more attention it garners, and consequently increases your performance metrics: you’re more likely to build more (prospective) customers.
What sounds so simple is actually a complex algorithm that decides which page of all the millions of pages is best to answer your question – on search engine optimization, for instance.
So, we may consider SEO and a marketing strategy of the digital kind. Understanding how SEO works can be critical to engaging more customers crosswise diverse demographics, bringing about business growth.
So…
How Does Search Engine Optimization work?
Everyone uses search engines in this age and era. Google is the world’s leading search engine. So, when you type in a query in the search box, what determines which sites are displayed on the first page, second page, etc? Better still, on the first page, what determines the ranking? Why is this site first in line and that fifth? Yes, that’s right, SEO.
I’ll save you the technical details, but you see, search engines, such as Google or Bing, use crawlers to collect information from site to site and gather them in a “box” – sort of. Then, it uses its algorithm, while considering myriads of factors, to analyse the content of the “box”. The result determines the ranking order of how pages appear in the result of your search query.
(Whoa! That wasn’t easy.)
Now, to what must be the pressing question on your mind:
What Factors Constitute a Successful Search Engine Optimization?
When you think of SEO ranking, you’re probably thinking of content quality and keywords. Don’t get me wrong, both are key factors, but there’s much more that makes up a successful search engine optimization.
Such other essential factors that you shouldn’t overlook include:
- Crawl accessibility / Crawlability: this is how search engines access and can read your site. So, watch out for broken links, for instance. Should your site have crawlability issues, crawlers will find it challenging to access your site’s contents.
- Mobile-friendliness, such as loading speed, compelling UX, and other great user experience.
- More than quality contents, but such that earns citations and links.
- URL, title, and snippets of the page to earn a higher ranking in the search engine result pages (SERPs)
SEO may sound techy to you, but with some more research and a little (no, not a little, lots) of practice, you can learn how to build an SEO for your page and business. Also, some websites have made the operation easier.