APRIL 1, 2019

What is SEO

• 15 Comments
• By: Pooja Dhakad
• digital marketing, Trends

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is an important Digital Marketing Tactic to increase the quantity and quality traffic to a website through unpaid (organic) results.

What is SEO?

“According to Wikipedia, SEO is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page.”

Some says it is a process of optimizing your online content so that search engines like Google likes to show it as a top result for searches of certain keywords.   

Above all the definition, what I understood is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an Art & Science of optimizing a website or a web page such that it can rank higher on the search engines for selected keywords or phrases.  

This can be done through optimizing the elements of a web page such as content, images, page URLs, heading (H1, H2, etc.), internal links and external links. Using targeted keywords and relevant anchor text plays an important role in your website rank.  

Types of SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

There are three important pillars of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – On-Page Optimization, Off-Page Optimization, and Technical SEO.

On-Page SEO

On-Page SEO is all about relevance. You need to understand what your audience is searching for and deliver the right content that satisfies them. The process of building a user-friendly website architecture that makes easy for users to navigate is called on-page optimization.

On-Page SEO refers to all the things that could be done on the website to improve the website architecture. The most important factors of on-page SEO are Meta Title and Description which often display on organic search results. The best on-page SEO practice to use your target keyword in title tag and description. Optimizing web-page URLs, image description and headings of the content is a part of on-page SEO.

Off-Page SEO

Off-Page Optimization refers to all the things that could be done externally to gain domain popularity and higher rank. Off-page SEO optimization is a technique which helps the website to improve its ranking in search engine results page. These factors are not directly controlled by you. Off-page basically deals with link building or backlinking.

Some of the major factors of off-page optimization are link building, social media popularity, videos, blogging, guest posting, article submission, etc. Off-Page factors involve improving search engine rank and user perception about site popularity, relevance, trustworthiness, and authority.

Technical SEO

Technical optimization refers to all things that could be done to get indexed fast and makes easy for search engines to crawl a website properly. Technical SEO mostly into website and server optimization. It helps search engine to crawl and index your site more effectively.

Factors for Technical Optimization –

• Sitemap
• Robots.txt
• Schema.org
• Canonical URL
• Redirection
• Mobile optimization

White Hat Vs Black Hat SEO

White Hat SEO

The term white hat SEO refers to SEO strategies that are following search engines algorithms and policies including Google. White hat SEO is a way of building a sustainable online business. It is focused on the audience and authentic content. Examples of white hat SEO is offering quality content, easy to navigate your website, descriptive keyword-rich Meta Tags, etc.

Failure to follow white hat SEO method, there is a chance of getting your site banned from Google and other search engines. Among other search engines, Google is visited by billions of people every day. And it is considered as an undeniably powerful source of the traffic to your website. If your website is being banned can result in a drastic drop in website traffic and even business. There is no guarantee that will ever re-list again.

Black Hat SEO

If you want quick results, you will probably end up doing black hat SEO. Black hat SEO is a practice against search engine rules. Back hat SEO uses controversial SEO methods to achieve a higher rank on search engines. Black hat methods are usually considered unethical. These unethical techniques don’t solve for the searcher and always end in a penalty from search engines. Some of the black hat SEO techniques are keyword stuffing, cloaking, irrelevant keywords, etc. You might make money this way, but you will continuously have to be on the lookout for search engines updates and come up with new ways to dart the rules.

In the world of SEO have clear terms and condition to follow. Rules are made to provide a useful, relevant, quality user experience. Search engine algorithms change frequently and SEO tactics evolve in response to those changes.