Search engine optimization 101

What is SEO?

SEO is the short form of Search Engine Optimization. As the name suggests, this is a process to optimize web pages in order to increase both the quality and quantity (the traffic it will generate) of the pages. In addition to these, SEO also increases the exposure of your brand via organic engine results.

SEO is as much connected to people as it is to search engines. It’s all about understanding the need of people. What are they trying to search, and what are the words they are frequently using to do this. Once you get an answer to these questions, you can connect your brand to the audience in a more efficient manner. 

 If knowing more about the audience is one face of the coin, then delivering the perfect product so that search engines can find it easily is another face of the coin. Typically, people skip either one of these two. But let’s not do that and see our comprehensive guide of SEO 101.

What are Search Engines? 

Search Engines can be considered as an all-in-one answering machine. It has the power to answer anything that you can throw at it. From continuously searching through billions of online pages, it is an extremely strong tool that can help you answer potentially every possible question in the world.

What is an organic search result?

Every search result that doesn’t come via an online ad can be considered as an organic search result. As mentioned above, organic search results can be achieved only after you have done some level of Search Engine Optimization. With companies continuously pouring money into the ad services, Search engine optimization is the only method that can work more efficiently without paying anything.

What is the importance of SEO?

While paid options like social media ads and Google ads can always popularize your brand more and attract more audience, still a majority of the traffic is funneled via search engine results. Organic results like this not only save you from making a smaller hole in your pocket but also cover a more broad area on the internet. The conversion ratio of organic search result is much more than Ads because more than 80% of the time; it gets the attention of people that were actually trying to get that particular service.

Google ads or other paid ads more often attract the customers that by mistake, click on the ads or just visit a site because of its interactive ad and are not interested in the service in real life. This statement can be proved by a recent study where it was seen that ads only got 2.8% of the traffic while SEO got more than 20x of that.

Types of SEO -White hat vs Black hat

White Hat SEO

This refers to the process of optimizing a page where the process is done abiding all the search engine rules. Any strategy or plan is done without violating any type of search engine protocol. 

Black Hat SEO

This refers to the process where optimizing a page is done by breaking a few rules of search engine protocol. Attempt to fool/spam is done to get the desired results and hence this method can put the website at tremendous risk of getting penalized. Generally tried by high in debt businesses and bankrupt people, this method is highly frowned upon by the people in the writing industry.

Basic rules to follow while doing SEO

1. Don’t fool/spam the users
2. Customers/users should be the main aim of the website and not the search engine results.
3. Avoid short cut tricks to get the desired output.
4. While writing content, always think about what makes your site a uniquely engaging and valuable website.
5. Don’t use auto-generated content
6. Never take part in any link scams
7. Don’t plagiarise your content
8. Never use hidden text messages

While it must be kept in mind that desired SEO results can be achieved in 2 possible ways .i.e. White and Black hat methods. The later breaks search engine rules, and hence it should be avoided every time. White hat approaches will not just popularize your site more but also help your site become more reader-friendly for the normal public.