SEO: basics & benefits
Search Engine Optimisation is the process of optimising your website and content to increase visibility in search engines and, in turn, bring more organic traffic to your site.
Why are the SEO basics so important?
SEO, even in basic form, is what ensures people see your website; bringing traffic to your page and allowing you to showcase your business to the public. Establishing your position within your industry as a trustworthy source of information means beating out competitors, gaining visitors and advertising your products to more people.
Without SEO, your website and business can easily become lost among the millions of other similar businesses and websites online.
Organic search makes up the majority of online search results, with Google being the go-to search engine for over 90% of users. Therefore, understanding how the Google algorithm works is a vital part in your SEO efforts.
SEO isn’t just about ranking nationally; for many businesses, a strong local SEO strategy can be the difference between being found or being ignored. If you have a physical location, optimising your Google My Business (and local pack) helps to establish your position within the community, provide valuable information and build regional relationships.
The importance of keywords
Keywords are the terms that inform search engines and users what your content is about. For example, a blog post about “how to learn the SEO basics” will use one or all of these keywords to give an insight into the content within their page. Your keyword choice should be accurate and relevant, whilst matching user intent, in order to rank for this search term.
Google wants to give users the best possible results, and therefore is giving higher positioning to those websites that provide high value with unique and informative content. However, keywords still play a major role, and these should be included within your content, headings and meta description to communicate to the search engine what your post is about.
On-Page SEO basics overview
This is what is seen by visitors, both on your webpages and within a SERP. It allows search engines to understand each page’s content and determine how relevant it is to the user. Google is looking to provide the results that searchers are looking for, so it focuses on unique, quality content that is of high value to the user.
As this is the content people will be seeing, it’s important that you provide this quality content. Not too long ago, an ‘SEO basics’ blog would advise cramming in your keywords to rank higher, but that’s no longer good practice thanks to Google’s quality-driven searches. Answering questions, solving problems and ensuring your content is different (or has greater value than other similar pages) is beneficial for both the search engine and the user.
Within a SERP, how you display your webpage is a large factor in bringing visitors to your website. Your title and metadata are the first things people see, and they give an overview into what your page is about. Therefore, this should accurately describe the content as well as providing results that match user intent and appeal to readers with the goal of them clicking through. In fact, you can see it in the title of this article: ‘SEO Basics & Benefits’. That’s what we’re discussing and, crucially, it’s what somebody (such as yourself) would be looking for when you find this article.
Off-Page Search engine optimisation summary
Sometimes thought of as a public relations form of SEO, off-page focuses on actions outside your website and content itself that help to improve your overall rankings. For your website to be seen as a trustworthy source, gaining backlinks to your site from authoritative websites is often necessary. It’s better to have a few high quality relevant links to your website than lots of low-value connections.
Another option is to ‘guest blog’ on an established website; providing your expertise to a website that gains a higher amount of traffic means not only will you gain a backlink, but also new readers. There will be a greater amount of trust, as you are featuring on a website that they already frequent, which will help increase brand awareness.
Social media is considered a form of off-page SEO as, although links from social media do not directly improve your ranking, or count as backlinks, Google still crawls these, giving your page more chances to be crawled. Having a social media presence also helps in increasing popularity, and brand awareness, as over 93% of internet users also use social media in some way.
Technical SEO run-through
Technical Search Engine Optimisation is the aspect that’s often the most difficult to implement for those who are still learning the SEO basics, as this focuses on how well search engines crawl and index your site. Your page load time impacts your ranking. The speed should ideally be under 3 seconds, so being able to compress images and files into smaller, faster forms is necessary.
Redirect links are incredibly important. If you change your URL (On-Page), then it is vital you redirect any old links to the new ones; otherwise users end up on a dead link 404 and Google is unable to crawl and rank the page. Internal linking is highly beneficial, both for users to consume more of your content, and also for the search engine to discover and crawl your new pages.
A robots.txt file is how you communicate the structure of your website, as well as which pages should and should not be crawled and displayed. As well as having an HTML sitemap within your website, submitting your XML sitemap to the search engine is incredibly useful. The XML determines the structure of your website, and your pages are discovered far quicker than if they were discovered organically on a SERP or through internal linking.
What is E-A-T?
The Expertise, Authority & Trustworthiness of the page’s content, the creator and the website itself is rated for every search query, so improving this plays a large part in your ranking. How much ‘Expertise’ do you/your business have in the specific area your page is talking about? What level of quality and information is contained within the page? ‘Authority’ relates to the backlinks you have to your site from other authoritative relevant sites, along with mentions and overall domain authority.
Being a ‘Trustworthy’ business, and source of information, means having a secure domain, clear policies and protecting your visitors’ personal data. Having positive customer reviews and mitigating any negative press also plays a part in how ‘Trustworthy’ your website is considered.
Should I do my own SEO?
Whilst it is possible to work on your own SEO, it takes a lot of time, knowledge and experience to achieve optimal results. Most business owners don’t have spare time they can dedicate to their SEO, or simply don’t have any background within this field. Much like when we explored the pros & cons of building your own website, outsourcing to a provider is highly recommended. This frees you up to focus on running your business and its various needs, while ensuring the best possible outcome from an SEO service.
