Short Introduction to SEO and Its Best Practices
What is SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an Internet marketing strategy that increases the traffic generated into websites by increasing the visibility of the websites in search engines such as Bing and Google. If you can fully utilize search engines in your business, you would experience a growth rate and increase in traffic like never before.
The higher the ranks in SEO, the higher the website ranks in Search Engine Results Page (SERP) and the more traffic is generated to the website. Below are a few research facts to prove how important SEO is:
93% of all traffic to a website comes from a search engine;
67k searches are performed on Google every second;
Having the first position on Google has over 34% of click through rate;
Almost 75% of users do not scroll past the first page in Google;
Nearly 80% of users ignore paid ads in search results;
58% of all searches come from mobile devices.
Those are among a few proven facts and statistics when it comes with SEO. Remember, this industry is always changing so you and your business would need to evolve with it as much as possible. Below are the basic SEO strategies you would need to increase your website rankings:
Keyword optimization
SEO keywords are keywords or phrases in your web content which make it possible for your website to be found through the search engines. You use them according to the niche you’re writing on, and anyone who searches certain keywords involving that niche can easily find your website. This way, they help you to direct targeted audience to your website and increase your traffic.
Title tags
Each web content you produce should be tagged in the title. That is, the title, header and sub headers should have at least one keyword related to the niche you’re talking about. This makes Google easily locate your article among others when certain keywords are searched. It all starts from the title.
And don’t forget to make your title informative and intriguing enough to attract targeted audience.
Meta descriptions
The meta description is an excerpt that summarizes a web pages’ content. Meta descriptions are shown when there are keywords related to the site searched for in search engines. This is crucial for on-page SEO and encourages targeted audiences to click through your website.
Engaging content
This is by far the most important thing of them all. What is the point of doing all of the above if the content itself is not interesting? After inviting so many people inside your website, what would they do if the content itself is the problem? Is your call to action strong in its own right? Are your blog posts just random information that does not concern your niche? Are you writing just for the sake of it? Or worse, do you not write at all?
People won’t read something if it was unrelated to what they’re searching for in the first place. This would just increase your website’s bounce rates and reduce your website rankings on Google – which translates into a reduction of your traffic. Make sure that you do adequate research on anything you are going to write on your website, and add the references if necessary. Because if the content itself is lacking, all the work would have been for nothing.