Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the process of optimizing the content as per Google's algorithm which results in an improvement of the ranking of the website on the Search Engine Results Page(SERPs).
Now, how does it differ from paid advertising? Well, here the traffic generated is organic traffic or unpaid traffic, which means we are not paying the search engine to make a user’s to visit our site.
Approximately one-third of the total traffic generated is organic so In simpler terms- “Generating and optimizing the content as per search engine’s liking”.
How can we (as users) tell if a website is getting organic traffic?
When we search for a keyword in google say “benefits of giloy”, upon pressing enter, the first few results are ads, they have paid google to rank their website at the top for that particular k/w, below these ads the first ranking website is your first organic traffic receiver.
What are the types of SEO?
Well, to better understand the SEO concept we should know what the types of SEO are.
There are three types of SEO that help in ranking the page.
On-page SEO: Includes title, meta description, H1, H2 tags, etc.,
Off-Page SEO: These activities take place behind your website and often include activities like backlinks, guest posting, etc.
Technical SEO: These include the technicalities of your website like is your site mobile friendly or not, what is your page speed insights etc.
How do we know what are the strategies involved in any SEO techniques?
This is a crucial factor to keep in mind. The three strategies are:
Black-Hat SEO: These include the practices which are against Google's algorithm. During crawling, if google understands that there is a black-hat SEO activity performed then there are high chances for Google to penalize the website, and/or Google can ban the website forever. But, what are the activities which come under black-hat SEO, let’s check:
1. Keyword stuffing
2. Duplicate/ Plagiarized content
3. Redirecting to another website, This technique is also called Cloaking.
4. Links from Inbound sites.
White-Hat SEO: These are the practices that are accepted by Google's algorithm to date, however, under what factors Google is planning to rank any business is never known. Let’s see what are the factors which come under this technique.
1. Niche-based content.
2. Relevant and verified external links.
3. Right standards of HTML.
4. Relevant page titles and meta description
5. Niche-based images.
6. Usage of right images based on the niche.
But,
What basis does google rank a website?
There are nearly 200 points for the Google algorithm to rank a website. The relevance or weightage of these points varies and new points are added to the process. The old concept was backlinks. This is still a mystery for any website owner. To date, Google is ranking the website based on Expertise-Authoritative-Trustworthiness(E-A-T) of the website. For better clarity on this concept, one has to follow Google Webmaster Console and check website performance on Google Search Console.
Where can E-A-T be implemented?
Well, we all have come across the term “content is king”. Its true, that content is a crucial part of any website, so, having a high-quality content better the quality of content better it is for the users to understand and at the same time easier for Google's bot to crawl so, the quality of the content is very much important.
2. Intent of the content: when you prepare a blog or a piece of content, what is your intention to convey to the visitors? What are you trying to convey through your website, so the intent of the content is important?
3 . Freshness of the content: It is a good practice to keep updating your content if ignored, then this can result in a drop in ranking on the Search Engine Results Page(SERP). QDF (Query deserves Freshness)-as the name suggests we need fresh content each time but what type of content needs freshness. The fact that it is new does not imply that it will work for all forms of information. A blog article describing the history of the Taj Mahal does not come within QDF, but a piece regarding opinion polling for the next UP election does. The Google algorithm examines the query and then ranks the sites based on the most recent update time.
Can you rank in SERP without SEO activities?
Yes, if you get good visitors to your site and less competition in your niche then there are chances for you to rank on search results pages, but soon it can come down as google changes its algorithm and many people get into the same niche.
You are not creating posts for search engines, you are creating for users. If visitors are happy with your content, Google will give you a good rank.
Conclusion:
I hope I have covered the basic key points about SEO and anyone new to SEO can refer to and understand the basics of SEO. One thing to keep in mind, take an extra step toward the concept and avoid shortcut techniques as it can result in penalties by Google.
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