What Is SEO?

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Excerpt: SEO is an acronym that stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is the act of increasing...

Posted by: SCraig
Posted on: April 14, 2022

What Is SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?

SEO is an acronym that stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is the act of increasing your websites visibility when users are searching for terms that are related to the product, or service that you provide.

How Does SEO Work?

Google and Bing, are popular search engines that specialists will optimize for. Search engines will send out “crawlers” to the web, these crawlers visit web pages and monitor changes on those web pages. The information is then indexed by the crawlers search engine, once Google has indexed your page, it will rank you based on hundreds of different signals and factors that will affect your position.

Some basic important factors ranking include:

On-page optimization – Headers, content, images, meta info, etc.
Off-page optimization – Citations, backlinks, etc.

There are a huge number of other factors that you will need to focus on, but these are the very basics of SEO.

How Long Does It Take For SEO To Work?

This question is almost impossible answer, SEO is a never-ending fight that can last as long as the domain name is live. However, if you are looking for a more specific answer, to see significant results from search engine optimization, you should expect to wait at least 3-6 months (this is not a guarantee, just a best practice estimate).

The effects from optimizing your website may show sooner if you:

Have a experienced specialist or agency optimizing the site.
Are targeting keywords with high-volumes and lower difficulties.
Have a bigger budget for more hours spent on optimizing.

How To SEO?

You would need a whole library of content to answer this question effectively (which is why we built this site). In the most basic explanation, you would target the highest volume keywords, and optimize for those keywords to drive more users to your site through the organic search result.

To more optimize for keywords you can implement a few basic strategies

Heading Tags

Add the keywords in to the h1, h2, and h3 tags at least (h4-h6 are not nearly as important).

Copywriting

Make sure the content on the page is optimized for that keyword, and keywords related very closely to it.

Snippet Optimization

The meta description shown in Google can either pick up your chosen description, or the closes relevant on the page, optimizing for this will increase your Click Through Rate (CTR).

Backlink & Citation Building

Backlinks are links to your website from other websites. These links are important signals to Google that if done well, will increase your websites domain authority (if you use MOZ), or Domain Rating (if you use Ahrefs). DA and DR where invented by Moz and Ahrefs to approximate how effective a website might be for ranking against other websites that are in your niche. Citations aren’t considered as important as backlinks but they still play a significant part in ranking your site. Citation websites have huge directories of websites that are either added to them manually, or they can be added automatically, or both. Citations add legitimacy to your website and can help you rank higher, and they can help users find your site!

Meta Optimization

The meta info for each web page can be optimized specifically for your targeted keywords. The meta will show up in the rankings if it is relevant to the search and is used to convey a summary of what the page is about.

Structured Data

In modern SEO, you can add “schema markup” to a page so you can dictate certain facts about the site to the crawler. This way the crawler will not have to guess as much as to what the page is, and structured data can show up with special features on the SERP that may increase your CTR.

Speed Optimization

Having a fast website is critical to ranking high for your keywords. Google has recently begun to focus on user experience for the site, a fast loading webpage will vastly improve your user experience.

Mobile Optimization

If your page isn’t mobile friendly (optimized for tablets and cellphones) your not going to rank nearly as high as you could, and you may even get penalized. Google will reward you if your website looks and runs as good on the phone as it does on the desktop.

Semantic Optimization

This is a advanced topic, but it involves the practice of adding more meaning to your content via a variety of methods. This helps Google to understand what your content actually is.

Topical Authority

This is another modern SEO topic that will give a website a bigger advantage if Google thinks you are an “authority” on that topic.

Tracking Data

Analytical tools like Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager should always be installed on your site these will tell you everything you need to know about the progression on your SEO.

Image Optimization

Images can weight down your site immediately if you are not careful. Your images should always be optimized, and you should you JPG as much as possible. For extra speed, you can deliver these images as .webp files on WordPress so the are super optimized.

Thoughts On SEO

SEO is a huge topic cover, it is critically important for any website and should not be ignored or neglected. If done correctly, you can send huge amounts of traffic to your site as long as you follow the best practices regularly, stay up-to-date, and keep SEO as your main focus!

P.S. We know there’s infinitely more topics to cover then what you see in this article, and we intend to do our best at it! So hang around and learn with us, :).