SEO is a fairly simple concept attached to a complex set of strategies for success. As a result, it can seem overwhelming whether you know a little, a lot, or nothing at all about the process. Below are the basic fundamental principles of SEO, followed by a quiz to reveal how much you really know.
SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is a method used by internet marketers to formulate copy (writing and text) on a website and configure the content to make it more valuable in the eyes of search engines, thereby populating that website when users search for certain associated terms.
By fulfilling the needs of users with the creation of relevant web copy and blog content, the website provides the best possible user experience. Search engines like Google, the dominating voice in all things SEO, recognize and reward your efforts.
There are both on-page and off-page SEO processes. Tasks like keyword research and link building occur off-site, and strive to drive user traffic to the page. Technical optimization, content creation, and user experience techniques serve to drive traffic, increase a user’s time on the page, and boost the potential that users will take a certain desired action, like purchasing a product, signing up for an email list, or clicking an affiliate link.
SEO is the best way to get users to your website, otherwise known as traffic. Without paid and organic SEO efforts to drive users to your page, your website will likely see little traffic. For example, on a regular day, billions of Google searches are conducted to find products, answer questions, and get more information about organizations, products, and services.
SEO tasks like keyword research can reveal which words or phrases associated with your niche users search for most. These are the keywords you want to target in order to harness the potential of search engines. Harnessing that potential can mean optimizing your keyword use to appear in the top results for searches that contain target keywords for people who want to interact with organizations like yours.
The higher your rankings on the search engine results page (SERP), the more visible you are to searchers, and the more traffic you will drive to your website. In fact, the top search results get a significant portion of user clicks. When you drive more traffic to your site, you ultimately earn more business and boost your brand awareness. Without SEO, the traffic goes to your competitors.
When a user conducts a search, there are two types of results they get: paid results and organic results.
Some traffic comes from ads, whether banner ads on landing pages across the internet, or paid search engine results near the top of Google’s SERP. Generally, these ads exist on a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) basis as PPC advertising. You’ll pay for that traffic via bids with other advertisers for the frequency of your ad being offered to users when they do a search.
The most natural way to get your website near the top of the SERP is to earn that ranking via SEO. In fact, many businesses find organic traffic to be more lucrative, despite the fact that they are not paying for each click. When users conduct a search, many of them prefer organic search results over sponsored/paid results.
While paid clicks are just pay-and-go, boosting your organic traffic takes thoughtful creation of carefully researched content. In time, though, by ranking for keywords the “natural” way, website owners can ultimately cultivate a well-optimized site that not only generates continuous traffic but also satisfies users once they get there. From there, those satisfied users are more likely to stick around and navigate to the components of the website that will ultimately pay off for the owner.
It is important to note that PPC advertising does have its place in a comprehensive marketing strategy, and the two types of strategies work best when used together in a complementary manner.
There are three main steps that Google or other search engines take to find results for users’ searches: crawling, indexing, and serving.
Initially, search engine bots “crawl” websites. You can think of it like “spiders crawling the web.” The spiders, which are really computer programs, crawl every corner of the web in search of updates to webpages or new webpages.
The next component of search engine result findings is called indexing. The search engine analyzes every single page that is crawled in an effort to categorize it in terms of many different factors. The information is then stored in the Google Index. This is a massive database of websites, webpages, and the information obtained about them.
The third phase is serving results. If a user runs a search, Google uses the index to determine the best options for answering the query in terms of relevance and quality. They are then ranked within the SERP and “served” to searchers. It is then left to the users to select which of the recommended search results they click on.
The ever-changing enigma that is a search engine’s algorithm will always remain a mystery, no matter how many search engine analysts try to crack the code. While Google regularly releases updates regarding major changes to its algorithm, the detailed intricacies that go into ranking pages and deciphering value in a site remain a bit of a mystery to many. Still, seasoned SEO experts are capable of conducting research with mainly trial and error to test them.
Because there is an unlimited number of factors to test, SEO experts are the best source for information regarding the most influential factors in terms of ranking in the search results. However, there are some basic practices that nearly always influence the results, so even SEO newbies can apply effort and experience success enough to know they are the most important traits of a quantifiable ranking.
Google itself has released information about its most important factors over years of algorithm updates. These include relevance to the user’s search intent, page utility, site authority, load time, high quality content, keyword optimization, backlinks, web structure, and mobile friendliness.
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When going to work on a site that needs SEO improvement, we know the key is relevant, useful content from an authoritative source. Within that content, you can include the keywords that will alert the search engine of its relevance to your target audience. This is so critical because Google wants to provide searchers with the most relevant results that meet their needs for the intended search. If they don’t, users will go to another search engine.
Relevance, however, is more complicated than it sounds. Predicting the users’ search intent is more than just identifying keywords – satisfying that intent once the user gets to the page is a comprehensive process. Eminent has found a formula that works, and if you’re looking to improve your site’s SEO and maximize the power of SEO for your business, you can trust us to take your SEO to the next level.
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If you are reading this because you clicked on a link to this page from Google’s SERP because you want to learn what SEO is and how it works, you have witnessed first-hand the power of SEO. The complex, comprehensive strategy we use to approach SEO works, and we just proved it by getting you here to this page. We can do the same thing for your website.
With our process and unique application of organic and PPC SEO practices, you, too, can leverage the power of search engines to drive an abundance of traffic to your website. Once they’re there, we can ensure that valuable traffic sticks around to get the full experience of your page, via innovative web design and solid technical SEO practices like optimizing page load speed, site mapping, and much more.
Altogether, these efforts can translate to conversions – when a user takes the action you desire, whether that be making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or something else – and conversions can translate into a solid financial foundation for your business.
We’ve helped thousands of websites generate organic traffic and leads with strategic SEO campaigns since 2005.
Call us for a free SEO consultation: 800.871.4130
