What Is SEO and How Does It Work?
By: Farhad Shaikh
Tags: Content Strategy, Black Hat Seo, Search Engine Optimizati, Content Creation, SEO

Can you imagine how many blog posts are published every day?

Only WordPress accounts for 27% of all the current websites over the internet and 24 blog posts are published every second!

This is quite a huge number, to be honest. So this post is exactly what you need to do and how to stand apart from the crowd? And the answer to this is indeed SEO.

What is SEO?

SEO is the acronym for Search Engine Optimization.

It is the process by which you can rank your website on the top of the results page and this will drive you more organic or un-paid traffic.

In short, changes in your website design and content that attracts search engines (such as Google).

Now a search engine is made with the purpose to solve its users' problem and to do this it will promote only those content that seems more relevant and can solve the problems of its users.

Not only the relevant content is important but the quality of the content matters too.

Now the basic process underlying this is, search engines scan or index your website to know what this website is actually about, is it easy to navigate through the website and is it user-friendly?

For example, if you write an article about ‘How to ride a horse’?

Now if you want this blog post to get in front of the right people (which you want!) you need to optimize this post so that it ranks on the results page for the phrase ‘How to ride a horse’?

B ENEFITS OF SEO

Having said that SEO helps you to rank higher on search engine results page, there are many benefits of ranking higher:-

Expand visibility on search engines

Helps you bring more traffic

Increases the chances of conversion

Increases engagement

FACTORS THAT AFFECT SEO

Content Marketing

As mentioned earlier, good quality and relevant content are what search engines are looking for, it is important to note that it helps to connect your brand with the visitors.

And once you are successful in making connections with the visitors and gain trust, you are likely to bring more conversions.

In simple terms,

MORE ENGAGING + QUALITY CONTENT = MORE SALES/ CONVERSIONS

Types of content you can focus on to improve search engine rankings:-

Blogpost and articles

Social media content

Ebooks and whitepapers

How-to guides and tutorials.

As ‘content is the only king’ it’s worth investing some time on how to create quality content.

The important thing that you might be looking out for is SEO keywords and phrases. These are simply those words that a user is looking for an answer to their specific problem on the search engine.

Another factor that can impact your content is the ‘freshness’ of the content. In simple terms, freshness means how frequently your organizations are posting blog posts.

Fresh content can also be prepared by updating, rewriting them, or adding new statistics and information.

Though creating quality content requires a decent amount of time and effort, it will pay off more than you expected in the future.

2. On-page SEO

The on-page SEO are those factors that are controllable and happen on your website.

Few on-page SEO factors that will help you improve your search engine rankings are:-

Title tag :- Title tags allow the search engine to know what your website is about. This should include less than70 words or less including the keyword your content focuses on and the business name.

:- Title tags allow the search engine to know what your website is about. This should include less than70 words or less including the keyword your content focuses on and the business name. Meta-description :- Meta description provides a bit more detail about your pages. This should include your keyword and provide clues to the reader about the content.

:- Meta description provides a bit more detail about your pages. This should include your keyword and provide clues to the reader about the content. Sub-heading :- It makes it easier for visitors to read, but helps you improve your SEO. You can use H1, H2, and H3 tags.

:- It makes it easier for visitors to read, but helps you improve your SEO. You can use H1, H2, and H3 tags. Internal links :- Internal links are the links that connect your existing article with another related article that helps you evenly distribute your traffic among your articles.

:- Internal links are the links that connect your existing article with another related article that helps you evenly distribute your traffic among your articles. Image Name and ALT Tags:- You should use images with your content and you should also include your keyword with the image that helps you drive more traffic.

Also, remember that everything in access is bad so it is important to know that do not over-optimize your articles. Google and other search engines will penalize your site if you try to stuff keywords.

3. Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO are factors that are not controllable, but you can improve your chances of having these factors work in your favor.

Few off-page SEO factors that can impact your search engine rankings are:-

Trust :- Trust is a major factor that impacts your SEO rankings. This factor differentiates between a spammy site and a legitimate site. You can build up your site’s trust by building quality backlinks. And hence another factor is backlinks.

:- Trust is a major factor that impacts your SEO rankings. This factor differentiates between a spammy site and a legitimate site. You can build up your site’s trust by building quality backlinks. And hence another factor is backlinks. Backlinks: - You should be careful that backlinks from spammy sites are a quick and easy way to get your site banned by google. Instead of trying to get quick links, try to engage with other influencers and let them link to your site in the future.

- You should be careful that backlinks from spammy sites are a quick and easy way to get your site banned by google. Instead of trying to get quick links, try to engage with other influencers and let them link to your site in the future. Social:- It is rightly said that ‘Sharing is caring’ and probably this is the thing that you want. You want to get as many shares as possible on social media.

Ultimately your aim should be to build quality content that your visitors might find helpful to them and they might visit back to your site in the future.

This will help to build trust among the users and ultimately search engines will trust your site and start promoting your site up the search results.

BLACK HAT SEO VS WHITE HAT SEO

Until now we have discussed what is SEO and how it works.

Now, let’s dig into it some more.

So basically there are two types of SEO Black hat and White hat.

Now as the name suggests Black hat SEO seems the somewhat evil type.

And indeed it is!

Some brands are interested in only ranking their content and want to make some quick money. Their ultimate aim is only to rank on the search engines.

So they optimize the content only for search engines rather than human visitors. Although the ranks for the short term quickly then search engines realize this and penalize their site.

Depending on the severity it is sometimes quite impossible to get back from the penalty.

Now white hat SEO is the thing that any long-term business must do.

For this, the content is optimized not only for the search engines but for human visitors also. This type of SEO may take some time to rank your website but it will pay off in the future.

CONCLUSION

You may think in the beginning that you start writing and visitors will come. But the harsh reality is that they don’t.

And as mentioned earlier, 24 blog posts are published every second from WordPress alone; it is practically not possible to rank for your keywords unless you have done the basics right.

Have patience and keep optimizing your articles and it may take 6 months to a year to see the results. Avoid bad practices such as Black hat SEO and try to provide value to your reader through every article you publish and that’s it.

Hope you may have got some feeling about SEO after reading this article and trying to comment on which of the above-mentioned techniques you are implementing in your articles.