This is an introductory guide to SEO for beginners with their meaning, process, and interesting facts. Plus, there’s also an explanation of how we can do SEO in three different stages.
Let’s Start.
What is SEO?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of fixing technical and contextual issues within a website to increase its visibility so that it appears in higher search results for desired terms in search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing & so on. It is one of the hardest marketing skills & a growing industry of $80 Billion dollars, one of the most critical aspects of selling products, as per Microsoft.
Suppose, you own a company about ‘Aluminum’ products and also have a website for it. Now, you will not get any sales or calls through the site unless there are visitors on it. Again, there are two ways to receive customers online, either via Social Media Marketing, which is basically via running advertisements on network sites such as Facebook, Instagram, etc; or via search engine optimization.
In social media marketing, the audience is not 100% targeted. When you boost a post or page, they will display the advertisement for a wide group of people that may or may not be interested in buying the product. This will also cost you a lot of money for a successful SMM campaign, that will stop running once your budget is over.
Whereas, in search engine optimization, the audience is 100% targetted. People will search for the product that they want to buy, in search engines, and come to your website to purchase it. There will be regular customer flow even if you run out of budget and no need to pay money for advertisements.
However, the only problem with SEO is that there’s also a huge competition going on and most search engines such as Google can only display up to 10 websites on their first page. Most importantly, 90% of Google users stay on the first page and select a website from the top ten results. The website that appears in the top 3 for Google Mobile gets 60% more clicks, calls, customers, and visitors utterly free without paid promotions.
In fact, Google is the most visited website in the entire world, no, it’s not Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. It covers 91.9% of the organic search market, beating the likes of Bing (2.88%), Yahoo (1.51%), Yandex (1.27%), Baidu (1.16%), and others. Moreover, there’s an average of 99,000+ search queries happening on Google every second, which is a huge number of people using Google.
As of this writing, Google receives more than 8.5 billion searches every day for different terms, based on Internet Live Stats. Similarly, Google received approximately 80.9 Billion visits in the month of April 2022. Likewise, the second most product search also happen on Google (46%), only behind Amazon (54%).
Therefore, SEO should be the first internet marketing module that one needs to understand while getting into the online business field. In reality, most companies are missing a lot of business opportunities due to not spending time and money on SEO.
How does SEO work?
The Search Engine Optimization process starts the moment right after you create and publish a website. On one hand, we have our business website, and on the other hand, there’s Google.
Most of these so-called search engines have their own so-called spider-like crawlers. These are some artificial intelligence-powered bots that will visit our website, read (or crawl) its entire source code, and send the data to their particular engines. Now, permission for those bots to enter our site is granted by a small file known as ‘robots.txt’. It contains a set of rules to allow or disallow certain search engine bots to enter our website.
Now, once Google receives data from its spiders, it will send the website into its index, which is basically the database of a large number of sites present on the internet. The index is made up of an algorithm that will check various factors in the website and compare it with the competitors. After the complete analysis, the algorithm will then assign a position for that web page which will appear in Google search results for various terms. This position will improve if the page is revamped and made better in the future and vice versa.
Moreover, the search terms and phrases that people use on Google are known as ‘Keywords’ or simply a ‘Keyword’ (singular). Keywords are the first major factors that shall determine where search engines will display the page.
A new website is also sent to the “Sandbox Period” algorithm that will test the site for six months minimum creating fluctuations in search positions. Once the testing and sandbox effects are over, the website will be treated as other regular websites. Therefore, it normally takes at least six months for a brand new website to appear on higher search results if it is able to pass the testing period.
Similarly, there are the following types of SEO that have their own unique methods of improving pages:
- On-Page SEO
- Off-Page SEO
- Technical SEO
- Local SEO
- YouTube SEO
- eCommerce SEO
- Shopify SEO & a few more.
Three Stages of SEO
1. Keyword Research: Find a group of 15-20 terms and phrases that people search in Google to purchase a product. It is the most critical stage of the SEO process to get conversion, traffic, and start ranking.
2. On-Page Optimization: In this phase, we develop a website in specific ways to get results. For example, create a Homepage that displays most of the information. It links to other pages like About, Privacy Policy, Services, Location, Testimonials, etc.
3. Off-Page SEO: This is the content marketing and natural backlinks building stage. We also try to get links from news sites known as press releases. They carry a very active, outstanding, and trustworthy citation. In addition to that, we build links from .edu, .gov, chamber, BNI, and other sites.
What is Local SEO?
As the name suggests, Local SEO focuses on ranking a local business website for local search keywords. Let’s say that you are the owner of a less popular hotel in Kathmandu, and you want more customers. There are two ways to find more customers: one is by doing a local advertisement through TV, radio, newspaper, and other agencies that cost a lot of money and investment.
The other option is to create a website for your hotel and do SEO for it in that particular region. In this way, if people search for the best hotel in Kathmandu or the best luxury hotel in Sanothimi or whatever place that might be, your business should be listed on top of Google. That is the power of local SEO.
Any more questions?
Thank you for reading this article, I hope you enjoyed it. Now that I have given you a little bit of an idea of what search engine optimization really is, you might have some additional questions in mind. To let you speak up, the discussion box is open below. (c ya)