What is a Search Engine?
Most people think of a search engine as a website that you type a question or generic search into and magically receive a long list of websites that may have the answer to your question or search. And they’re right, that’s pretty much what they are. But have you ever thought about why certain websites rank higher than others? The reason behind this is all to do with the SEO (Search Engine Optimsation) of that website. In this blog post, we will go over some important things to know about SEO without diving too deep into the world of SEO.
SEO / Search Engine Optimisation Simplified
SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimisation”. In simple terms, SEO is the process of improving your website to increase its visibility and rank on search engines like Google. The more optimised your website is, the higher it will rank, making it more visible to everyone on the internet. SEO is crucial to getting more traffic to your website and making your website more profitable.
How Does SEO Work?
Search Engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing use bots known as “crawlers” that crawl your website. These bots then collect information about your web page and will send it to be indexed by a search engine. A Search Engine algorithm will then analyse your web page once it has been indexed. The algorithm takes into account hundreds of ranking factors or signals to determine where your web page should be ranked for a search related to your web page.
Search Engine algorithms are designed to display relevant, authoritative pages that are providing users with an efficient search experience that shows the content the user is looking for. So it’s also important to make high-quality content that people will actually read.
Search engines have a major update to their algorithms at least once a year. This is why hiring an SEO Company in Ireland is so important to keep your website ranking high and maintain a flow of visitors every month.
What Does Google Look for in a Web Page?
There are many factors involved in ranking your web page. Some of the most important factors in ranking higher on search engines include making your web page mobile-friendly and targeting the right keywords. There are more factors including how fast your web page is too.
As well as making sure your web page looks good on the user’s end, it’s important to make sure your website is optimised for the bots that scan through it. This includes naming your imagery in an SEO-Friendly way. Imagine you have a picture of a red car, instead of naming it “DCIM_9414” you should name the image “red-sports-car-on-road”. Not only does this let Google know what your image is, but it also lets people with impaired vision know too.
As well as naming your imagery correctly, it’s important all your pages have correct titles and descriptions. These help Google know what your page is about and quite often both appear in search results too.
Another important thing for ranking your website is marking your text correctly. There are 7 types of text on a website. H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 are all headers with H1 being the most important header on the web page and H6 being the least important header. The seventh kind of text is paragraph text. If your text isn’t marked correctly Google’s bots will find it hard to know what the most important text is making it harder to know what the page is about.
Why is SEO important for Digital Marketing?
SEO is an essential part of any Digital Marketing strategy. Although ads are a quick way to get website visitors, you are paying for every click you get. Whether it converts or not. With SEO, your budget does not limit the number of clicks to your website. Although SEO can take longer to receive your return on investment, SEO is a much better long-term strategy in most cases. A good way to think about it is that ads are for short-term success while SEO is needed for long-term success.
Is SEO Expensive?
Like any form of marketing, the price of SEO is whatever you determine it to be. For a more realistic answer, the cost of SEO depends on the difficulty of ranking for your desired keyword. For example, a keyword that is difficult to rank for will take more time and effort than a keyword that is easy to rank for.
What Makes Keyword Difficulty?
The difficulty to rank for a keyword is based on how strong the competition is. An easy way to assume keyword difficulty before checking out the competition is the check a keyword’s search volume. There is always strong competition for keywords with high search volume because more people are trying to rank for them. Meanwhile, keywords with low search volume will have less competition that might not be as strong.
Conclusion
Mastering SEO on Google requires a combination of on-page optimization, off-page strategies, technical optimization, and a strong focus on user experience. By understanding Google’s search algorithm and implementing the recommended SEO best practices, you can improve your website’s visibility, drive organic traffic, and achieve higher rankings on the SERPs. Remember, SEO is an ongoing process, and staying updated with the latest trends and algorithm changes is crucial to maintaining your website’s SEO success.
