Let’s break down some key “SEO terms” and what they mean so you fully understand the concept and how it can help your business succeed.
Search Engine Optimization is the process of optimizing your website to increase its organic visibility in search engines such as Google. The higher a site ranks on Google or Bing, the more likely it will be clicked on by a user.
Sounds simple enough, right?
Well, there is a lot of work involved in getting to a higher rank, such as understanding SEO trends, building links to your website, creating content that people want to read, etc. But really, it’s an essential part of your business strategy – and when you get your head around it, it can be relatively easy to master. However, these are great things for your business because you are attracting more users, which means you can sell your products or services.
Even if you don’t want to do it yourself, understanding what it is and why it’s crucial means you can decide who does your SEO for you. So, let’s start at the beginning (it’s a perfect place to start) with some key terms and definitions that will help guide you through SEO.
What is SEO, and why does it matter??
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s the process of setting up your webpage to show on search engines’ top results for searches of a specific phrase.
Let me break that down even further.
When it comes to SEO, there is you, the search engine (like Google and Bing), and the searcher. For example, if you have an article about “What we know of how google works?”. In that case, you want the search engine (usually Google) to show it as a top result to everyone who searches for the keyword “how google works.”
Search Engine Optimisation is the magic you’ve to work on to improve your website as one of the top results when people search for that term on Google. The easiest way to look at SEO as a whole is to split it into three elements:
Technical SEO
On-site SEO
Off-site SEO
These elements all work together to optimize your website. But it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. You don’t need to be an expert in every area of SEO to achieve great rankings — you just need to understand the basics and how to use them together.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is the part of the process that involves ensuring that your website is coded correctly and running smoothly. To put it simply, technical SEO consists of all the steps you take on your website’s back-end to ensure that search engines can find and crawl your website. A few examples of technical SEO include:
Crawlability: Are your sitemaps accessible for search engines to crawl? The easier it’s for them to crawl, the easier it will be to find all your web pages and index them in their database.
Page speed: How quickly does your site load? A slow site can hurt user experience and your search rankings. Studies show that 40% of users abandon a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load
Indexing: Search engines need to know what each page on your website is about to rank it accordingly. So, ensure that your content is accessible to search engines (i.e., no pages are blocked from search engines.)
Several free analysis platforms can test your website speed and recommend areas for improvement. These include GTmetrix, PageSpeed Insights, and Pingdom Website Speed Test.
Technical SEO isn’t always as sexy as keyword research or link building. However, it’s still an essential part of the process. After all, there’s no point in doing any other aspects of SEO if Google can’t crawl and index your site correctly!
On-Page SEO
On-Page or On-Site SEO is after the technical work has been done, you will need to optimize your website’s content. The goal is to make the site accessible for the search engines to crawl and understand the content. Your website will not rank well in search results if it doesn’t.
Content optimization starts with keyword research. You’ll want to find keywords with a good search volume or people searching for them. And they should be related to your business, products, or services.
Once you’ve got your keyword list, it’s time to focus on optimizing the elements of your site. ON-SITE SEO also covers simple site navigation, consistency in publishing content and using the best SEO keywords. Including spreading keywords naturally throughout the copy of your content. Optimizing meta tags, titles, descriptions, URLs, images and alt text, etc.
On-Page SEO is so important because it helps search engines understand what your website is about. This will help you rank for the right keywords and, ultimately, the correct type of traffic.
If you don’t do any On-Page optimization. In that case, you won’t be able to rank for any keyword related to your website!
Off-page SEO
Off-page SEO (also called “off-site SEO”) refers to actions taken outside your own website to impact your rankings within SERPs. These factors include link building (getting other websites to link to yours) and social media marketing.
Link building is a vast topic that we won’t be able to cover in this post. But we need to highlight why it’s so essential: search engines use links to crawl the Web. Think of it this way: the number of quality links a website has acted as votes of confidence from other websites. These votes tell search engines that your website is worthy of citation. In other words, off-page SEO is about getting other websites to talk about your business.
Off-site SEO factors are as vital as any of these SEO factors. If you have got this far and ignored off-page SEO factors, your efforts may come to nothing. It is that important. We attempt to convince search engines our content is valuable, credible, and trustworthy in our off-page SEO.
We do this by getting the website in front of people who will link to it. This could be through social media promotion or by commenting on blogs and forums (yes, they still exist). We can also target other websites that offer a related service or product that we do not provide. You can see how this would work if you were a pet shop with lots of knowledge about dogs, for instance, but did not sell dog food. An excellent place to earn links is on a dog food site.
Key SEO terms you need to know.
There are so many different SEO terms that it can be challenging to keep up with. Here’s a list of some key “SEO terms” to make things a little easier and what they actually mean so that you can better understand the concept.
SERP
When users type in a keyword or question, they get a list of results back from Google (or another search engine). That result page is called the “Search Engine Results Page,” or SERP. It includes organic search results (based on the page’s relevance to the user’s query) and paid ads.
Search intent
The term “search intent” or “user intent” is used to describe the purpose of an online search. It’s the reason a user inputs their query into a search engine, and it’s closely linked to what they expect to see in the results. Understanding search intent can help you target the right keywords and optimize your page for the best results. Most of these queries are part of the user journey online, but they often represent different stages.
Keywords
The words or phrases that describe the content of a webpage are given by users on Google or the Bing search box. They’re also used for PPC advertising and pay-per-click advertising. For example, you may have heard phrases like “long-tail keywords” or “keyword research.”
Long-tail keywords
Typically reflect niche groups and specific interests. These are more specific phrases that users are more likely to use near the end of the buying cycle. They tend to have smaller search volumes but convert much higher since their intent is more specific.
Organic traffic
These are visitors who find your website through unpaid search engine results. It’s the opposite of paid traffic, which comes from pay-per-click advertising (PPC) or other types of paid promotion.
Header Tags
Another way to think about header tags is to envision a piece of text broken up into sections or chapters. In this case, the header tag would be the title of each section and sub-section. The header tags are used to organize and define the structure of the content on your site.
Meta Description
A brief description (usually 160 characters or less) summarizes a webpage’s content. It shows up frequently in SERPs underneath your highlighted blue title tag.
Alt-text
Alt-text also called “alt attribute,” is a text that describes an image on a web page. It is written into the HTML code using the alt attribute and provides a text equivalent for a photo. It’s also vital for accessibility purposes as well as SEO.
Sitemap
A sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs to inform search engines which pages you consider important. The sitemap also contains metadata about each URL. Data like the last time it was updated, how frequently it usually changes, and how important it is linked to other URLs on the site. Learn how to submit your sitemaps here.
Uniform Resource Locator or URL
URL or Uniform Resource Locator is nothing more than the address of a specified unique resource on the Web. In principle, each valid URL links to a terrific resource. Such resources may be an HTML page, a CSS document, a picture, etc.
Plugin
They work like apps and add functionality to your site. It’s a separate program from the core WordPress software and typically specific to a particular function, like adding security or making it easier for users to share content on social networks.
Bounce rate
The percentage of users who leave a site after viewing only one page. A high bounce rate can indicate that the page doesn’t offer what users want.
Why is SEO so important for Google?
More sales, more brand awareness, and a better business. You can achieve all this by:
- Increasing your online visibility by ranking on Google and other search engines (so people can find you)
- Getting more users to click on your results (they might be interested in what you have to say)
- Keep those visitors on your site for longer (because they like what they see).
If you have a website and want to get more traffic, it should be part of your marketing efforts. Period. There are several ways to do marketing: You can advertise and promote on Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube. Still, SEO is one of the most effective ways to increase targeted traffic to your website.
It’s also cost-effective: As soon as you start your SEO marketing, you will reap the rewards of free, organic traffic. SEO helps small businesses compete with big companies: A well-optimized site can help small enterprises to outrank much larger ones with more significant resources
When people type into the Google search box for information related to your business, you want to show up. Ideally, you want to show up prominently. Research also shows that 60 percent of traffic from Google searches goes to websites that appear in the first three search results.
How can you get started with SEO Marketing?
Content marketing is the best way to improve your search engine rankings. No matter how much you spend on paid advertising, it’s still challenging to beat high-quality content.
Influencing search engines (SEO) takes time, but it pays off when you start reaching a relevant audience. If you’re just starting out, it’s best to get specific with your focus.
Here’s a tip: don’t write about general buying topics. For SEO results, the most common phrase you’ll hear is “quality content.” Quality content has a unique, instantly recognizable value and relevance to the search being performed on Google. This doesn’t mean simply providing helpful information to users; it means giving valuable data to Google.
You can do this by focusing on frequently searched topics, conducting research on what your target audience (your potential customers) are searching for, and figuring out how your content answers those questions. Providing an answer in a simple, logical fashion; and choosing SEO keywords that are easily understood by readers.
Once you start generating the content, build some early authority by promoting it in your email newsletter and social media platforms. You’ll establish yourself as the go-to thought leader in the process