What is SEO? (Learn SEO Basics in 5 Minutes)

This article on Search Engine Optimization will cover all major topics which come under it such as The Importance of SEO, On-page & Off-page SEO, How SEO work, Top techniques for SEO, and important tools for SEO. 

Hope you will enjoy it!

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of getting targeted traffic to a website from a search engine’s organic rankings. Common tasks associated with SEO include creating high-quality content, optimizing content around specific keywords, and building backlinks.

In other words, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the practice of optimizing content to be discovered through a search engine’s organic search results.

What is the importance of SEO?

SEO is a sustainable way to market your website.  Using SEO to create an audience and generate leads on your website is important for website success.

Below are some benefits of performing Search Engine Optimisation on your website and keeping up consistent SEO maintenance:-

• Low cost when compared to PPC

• Higher brand credibility & authority

• Your website needs to be on the first page of Google organically

• Access to data allows you to leverage content for organic lead generation at no cost

What is on-page SEO?

When you think of the most basic search engine optimization tactics like using keywords in your copy and optimizing the meta description, HTML code, title tags, and alt tags, that’s the foundation for on-page optimization.

On-page SEO refers to all the measures that can be taken directly within your website to improve its position in the search rankings. This includes those basic tactics listed above but also takes into consideration things like overall content quality, page performance, and content structure.

What is Off-page SEO?

While on-page SEO refers to the factors you can control on your website, Off-page SEO refers to the page ranking factors that occur off your website, like backlinks from another site. It also includes your promotion methods, taking into account the amount of exposure something gets on social media.

It has everything to do with your social presence, link building, and many more that don’t have to be present on the page. Putting it in layman’s terms, I’d say, Off-Page SEO simply tells Google or Search Engines about what the audience thinks about your website.

How does SEO Work?

Search engine optimization simply helps websites or web pages to be found by search engines for words related to what the website or web page is offering. It is done smartly to get the best possible hits to the website through search engines.

It involves developing and optimizing a website so that it ranks higher in the search engine. Understanding of search algorithm and optimizing your content as per that.​

Here’s how it works: Google (or any search engine you’re using) has a crawler that goes out and gathers information about all the content they can find on the Internet. The crawlers bring all those 1s and 0s back to the search engine to build an index. That index is then fed through an algorithm that tries to match all that data with your query.

What are the Top SEO Techniques?

SEO best practices are a set of tasks designed to help improve a website’s search engine rankings. Common search engine optimization best practices include on-site optimization, researching keywords, and building backlinks to a site.

Add Your Main Keyword Early On In Your Content – Google puts more weight on terms that appear at the top of a webpage. Hence, it is necessary to mention your keywords at the top of the page.

Video Optimization/YouTube SEO –  According to studies, 72% of people prefer video over text when learning about a product or service. 41% of website traffic is generated by the video itself. It is also estimated that in the year 2021, 75% of website traffic will be made through videos.

It is very important to focus on how you can effectively use videos to attract clients and For this, you can use YouTube (the second most popular search engine after Google) which is a great platform for demonstrating your products and displaying your brand.

User Experience – According to a study, 70%-80% of users ignore advertisements. Not only do most users ignore sponsored search results; they’re also more likely to distrust the brand that’s advertising itself. 

Be sure to look out for the following, in particular, to improve the user experience while visiting your site such as Implement Mobile Friendly Design, Optimize your Page Speed, Improve your Customer Service, Add Social Media Links and Icons on your Site and Don’t add too many Popups.

Write Unique Titles, Descriptions, and Content –  Avoiding duplicate content is one of the most important SEO best practices to keep in mind.

Google has stated that you should avoid “duplicate or near-duplicate versions of your content across your site.”

Which are the important SEO Tools?

I am mentioning below some of the free tools but they are very effective and can add great value to your business.

Google Analytics – It shows you everything you need to know about your site’s data. It shows you the real-world results of every action you take on your site. How it impacts your traffic, how it increases your conversions, and who it attracts to your site.

Google Ads Keyword Planner – Keyword Planner is another free tool provided by Google, as part of their Google Ads product. Even though it is designed for paid search, it can be a great tool to use for SEO since it provides keyword suggestions and keyword search volume, which can be helpful when doing keyword research.

It remains one of the most popular Keyword tools of many people in the know. And, for good reason – it’s still one of the most accurate free SEO tools available.

You can access search volumes and the difficulties in one easy-to-use dashboard. Letting you choose and discover easy to rank for (or highly searched) terms to place in your content.

Google Search Console – A lot of newbies are not aware of how Google Search Console can help them improve website SEO. This is perhaps the best free SEO app on the planet for now. Using the Google search console you can quickly find the following:

• Which all pages are indexed on your site

• Which keywords are driving traffic

• From where are you getting links from

• Top linked pages

• Anchor text

SEMRush – It is a complete SEO suite and it’s a premium tool. However, not a lot of users know, they do have a free plan which doesn’t even require a credit card.

Here is what you will get from SEMRush in the free plan:

• One project to set up

• Up to ten rows of data in Analytic reports

• Max. ten daily requests in Analytics tools

• Max. ten KWs to track in Position Tracking Tool

• Ten SEO ideas units (number of KW analysis runs for the On-Page SEO Checker tool)

• 100 Pages crawl limit with Site Audit

Google Trends – Google Trends shows changes in search volume for different topics, search terms, and entities. Mastering this tool can keep your content current and one step ahead of the competition. 

Backlink Analysis Tools – There are several link analysis tools out there, the two primary ones being AHREFs and Majestic. Backlink analysis tools allow users to analyze which websites are linking to their website, or the websites of competitors, and can be used to find new links during link building.

Wrap Up

If you’ve made it this far, hopefully, you feel comfortable with some of the basics of SEO and what it means!

If you have a FREE SEO tool that does something different or better than what I’ve listed, please let me know in a detailed comment below! 

I hope you found this article to be helpful.

Also, If you liked this post and are new to this website then DO SUBSCRIBE! to my blog so that you don’t miss out on any of my upcoming blogs on some of the amazing topics on Digital Marketing scheduled to be posted in the coming months.

For a more technical look at Search Engine Optimization, check out this amazing article “SEO Techniques To Rank Your Website Higher”

Go forth and SEO…

Want to know more about SEO-related stuff?

Further articles to read on:

1. SEO Content Writing Vs Copywriting
2. Is Search Engine Optimization Really Important?
3. Creating Your Search Engine Optimization Strategy
4. 5 Facts About Search Engine Optimization