What is SEO?

According to Wikipedia, search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine’s unpaid results—often referred to as “natural”, “organic”, or “earned” results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users, and these visitors can be converted into customers.
In short, SEO increases your chances of appearing in the first few results that a search returns on Google, Yahoo, Bing, or other similar search engines. There are many facets of SEO, including the words, terms, and keywords used in your website, and how other websites link to your site. You must structure your website in such a way that search engine understands.
As an internet marketing strategy, SEO takes into account how a search engine works, what are the most commonly searched words, and which search engines are used by their target audience. To optimize your website you may need to edit content, HTML and other coding, to increase relevance to particular keywords, and to remove obstacles to the indexing activities of search engines. In recent times, mobile search has become more popular than desktop search.

Also Read: What is SEO? Search Engine Optimization

Why do you need SEO?

Most people end up on different websites via a search query on Google, Yahoo, or Bing. You may use other marketing strategies to get traffic on your website, but search engines are the primary sources of internet traffic. Search engines provide targeted traffic i.e people will get what they are searching for. If search engines cannot find your website then you are missing out on a lot of traffic.

Also Read:20 ways for doing best SEO for your website or blog

Can’t search engines find my website without SEO?

Search engines use crawlers for search results. Though they are smart and constantly improving, you do not want to run the risk of being missed out. An effective SEO strategy can get you thousands of visitors. SEO will also improve your chances of appearing in the first few pages of the search result. Ideally, you would want to be on the first page. But, as we know, the internet world is very competitive, and other websites are constantly working on SEO. In such a scenario, it would be foolish to leave your website without SEO.

How to make your website SEO friendly?

Now that you know the importance of SEO, here are some ways to make your website SEO friendly:
1. Include social media icons on your website. Integrating social media such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter with your website will increase improve your ranking on search engine results Social media is valued by search engines.
2. Optimize your images to improve their visibility on search images. Do not put very heavy or very large pictures on your website. Heavy pictures take a long time to load, and may put off visitors to your website. Images on your site should be 30 to 100kb and have a resolution of 72dpi. Use your keyword on the alt text section of the image.
3. Do not use JavaScript abundantly as it may make it difficult for crawlers to read your content. Moreover, JavaScript doesn’t work well on most mobile devices.
4. Your URL should be user friendly and specifi to the content on your website. An ambiguous and irrelevant url will make it difficult for search engine to feature you in results. Also ensure that words on the link are separated by hyphens, not underscore.
5. Place keywords not only in the copy, but also in the design of your website. They can be used in the title tag, H1 tags, website slogans, meta descriptions, meta keywords, navigation, H2 tags, bullet points, title attribute on links, H3 tags, breadcrumb trails, footer links, URL’s, file names, internal links and folder names.
6. Your website design should be compatible with all leading browsers and devices. A website that doesn’t load properly or is difficult to navigate will put off visitors and drive away traffic.

Also Read: Video Tutorial – On-Page SEO Practice To Adopt While Posting On WordPress

SEO Tools

Here are some SEO tools you can use to improve marketing:
1. Google PageSpeed Insights: It lets you check usability and speed of your website on different websites.
2. Google Analytics: Give you search insights and web stats. It also tells you which keyword people used to end up on your website.
3. Google Keyword Planner: Enter a keyword or group of keywords into the tool, and it will return helpful stats to guide your keyword strategy: search volume, competition, and suggested terms you might not have considered.

Also Read: Off-Page SEO PRACTICE TO INCREASE SITE RANKING

SEO Service Providers

You can outsource the task of search engine optimization to SEO providers. Although you will need to pay them, the return you get will hopefully be much higher than your cost.
SEO can make or break your internet business. By not optimizing your content, you risk losing a lot of visitors. It’s a good idea to learn the seo practices of all the major search engines.
What are your thoughts on SEO? Let us know below.