What is SEO and How Does It Work in 2022?
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SEO is short-form for Search Engine Optimization. Anyone who owns or manages a website needs to know what is SEO. In simple terms, SEO refers to a collection of techniques used to optimize a website for attracting organic traffic from search engines. The best SEO techniques will help your website rank on search engines’ first page results.
Search engine optimization is an ever-evolving process. Search engines update their algorithms regularly to ensure they provide the best results. That means that the SEO techniques that worked for your website in 2020, might not work in 2021.
So, how is search engine optimization done? This piece will provide a comprehensive answer to that question. Before that, let’s first explore the importance of SEO.
Why Must You Do SEO for Your Website?
Picture this; You’ve launched a new website but nobody knows it exists. You can share it with a few friends and family but that’s not enough to get a lot of visitors to the website. So, how do other websites attract millions of visitors every month? They optimize their web pages for SEO.
What do you do when you want to find some information or product online? Billions of people around the world will type a search query on Google or any other search engine available to them. It is estimated that Google processes over 3.5 billion searches every day. Google and other search engines use bots to crawl web pages on the internet and stores information about them in an index.
That index is used to provide the most relevant information or answer for a search query. The search engine’s algorithm determines the order in which the pages in its index for a particular query appear on the results page.
Website managers strive to ensure their website appears on search engine’s first page results for particular search terms. Such search terms are called keywords. SEO, when done right, can attract a lot of organic traffic to your website.
SEO can help you achieve the following:
- SEO lead generation
- Sell products.
- Build a following for your brand.
- Spread information or awareness on certain issues that of interest to you.
As the information supplier, you should ensure you meet the expectations of the searcher. But is that always the case? There are times you click through a website, and the results are quite different from your expectation. What is the next course of action? Leave the site.
A high bounce rate can negatively affect your website. Google values the intention of its users, and that is why you can rank high for days if you write to please the Google algorithm without your target audience in mind.
How is SEO Search Engine Optimization Done?
As mentioned earlier, SEO keeps evolving because search engines are constantly revamping their search engines. The basics of SEO do not change too significantly though. The main goal of your SEO strategy should be to improve your website’s visibility in SERPs (Search Engines Results Pages).
We are going to explore how SEO works in 2021 and offer some pointers on what you should be doing if you are just getting started with SEO.
How does SEO work in 2021?
You must first get your site indexed by search engines to allow them to crawl it when looking for answers to search queries. Your website must also have relevant content for it to appear on SERPs. Search engines are set to look for pages that can provide a large volume of relevant information about the query entered.
Your content is your strongest SEO weapon. That’s what you use to make your website visible to search engines.
How do you create the best SEO content? You have to do a couple of things;
- Understand your target audience
- Find out what search terms or keywords your target audience is likely to use
- Write content and optimize it for the keywords your target audience is using
There are different types of written content that you can use to target your keywords. The following types of content will make your website visible to search engines.
- Web copy – This can include descriptions of what the website is about or services and products offered.
- Articles and Blog Posts – These offer detailed information about a specific topic that would be of interest to your target audience.
- EBooks and Whitepapers – These are comprehensive publications that teach or inform about a certain subject.
- Tutorials and How-to guides – These help your readers learn how to do certain things that are relevant to your niche. For instance, you can create tutorials or how-to guides to teach your audience how the product you are selling is used.
You can also include audio-visual content on your website. Such content includes videos, audio clips, pictures, infographics, etc. Search engines algorithms can pick up the word beings spoken on the video and audio files and use them to categorize your content.
Creating a few pieces of content and leaving it at that is never going to get your website on Google’s first page. Google’s first page is the holy grail for all SEO experts and strategists.
Search engines, and in particular Goggle, will give your website more authority if you keep posting fresh quality content. Quality content will also attract backlinks from other websites, which will further improve your website’s authority. Higher website authority means higher chances of ranking for your targeted keywords.
Search engines also use the structure of your content to determine whether they should include it in query results or not. You need to know what search engines are looking for in well structure content in 2021. This is part of what is called on-page SEO.
On-Page SEO vs Off-Page SEO
What is the difference between off-page and on-page SEO?
On-page SEO refers to the aspects of optimizing your website and content over which you have full control. These aspects might include your content and its structure, page loading speed, the navigability of your site, and its mobile friendliness.
On the other hand, off-page SEO is the part of optimizing your website over which you do not have full control. This might include aspects such as backlinks, social engagements, and trust. That being said, you should know that the effectiveness of your on-page SEO efforts has a bearing on off-page SEO.
For instance, if you create quality and helpful content, you will keep attracting loyal followers and they will keep sharing your content. Those that are writing their own content will use your content as reference points and create backlinks to your website.
A lot of the work cut out for you is in on-page SEO. Your SEO campaign has to include all the essential on-page SEO factors.
Essential On-Page SEO Ranking Factors
We mentioned above that on-page SEO involves aspects such as page loading speed, navigability, and mobile friendliness. These are issues you can deal with through proper web design. If you do not have the required skills, you should seek the help of professional web designers.
The most important aspect of on-page SEO is the structure of your web pages and the content. Your web pages and content should be structured in a manner that makes it easy for search engines to know what they are about.
What should well-structured web pages and content look like?
SEO Optimized Web Page Structure
A well-optimized web page should feature the following:
- All the highlights of the web page should clearly indicate what the page is about. The subject or topic should appear in the following areas:
- Top of the page
- Title tag
- URL
- Image alt text
- If your website has categories and sub-categories, all your web pages should link bank to their respective category and subcategory pages.
- A link back to the homepage. The best way of doing that is by adding a logo with an image link to your homepage at the top of the page.
You should also create meta descriptions for all your web pages. Meta descriptions are snippets of content that briefly describe what the page is about, or provides an answer to the topic question of the page. These snippets appear on SERPs when your web page start ranking.
SEO Optimized Content Structure
Your content structure should be focused on making it easy for the reader to go through your content and find what they are looking for. That is achieved by breaking down your content into headings and sub-headings.
Use Heading Tags – Your content management system must have H1, H2, and H3 tags. These tags will help you break down your content into sections with headings and sub-headings. Many visitors to the page will come looking for a specific piece of information. Headings and sub-headings will make it easy for them to find what they are looking for and they’ll most likely stay on the site longer.
Use Images and Infographics – Imagine reading blocks upon blocks of texts. It gets boring pretty fast. Breaking down your content into small biteable paragraphs and inserting images and infographics helps to break the monotony. The visual impact of the images and infographics can help hold visitors on the site for a longer duration.
Make sure you add alt tags to the images and infographics to make it easy for search engines to know what the images are about. If possible, add some of your keywords to the alt tags.
Takeaway
In 2021, SEO is no longer what it used to be a few years ago. You can no longer just stuff a couple of keywords on a web page and hope it will start ranking. The most important thing is to learn SEO best practices. Find out which of the different types of SEO techniques can work best for your website, and come up with a strategy.
Keep in mind that SEO is a gradual process. Your website is not going to get lucky and suddenly start appearing on SERPs. Publishing quality SEO optimized content will see your site grow over time and it will eventually appear on SERPs. You need to continuously work on ensuring improving the content and structure of your website.
Search engine optimization can be overwhelming for most businesses. It involves a lot of bits and pieces. If you are struggling to create content, optimize your website and get rankings on search engines, you could use our content creation and SEO services.
Our team of SEO experts at Digital Marksmen will deliver outstanding SEO services and gradually improve your website’s ranking on search engine. They will help you attract organic traffic to your site and build a community of loyal followers and customers.