Introduction
We always wonder how SEO works when we want to grow our business online. Why is it important? And what can I do to work towards a successful SEO Campaign?
Search Engine Optimization remains as one of the largest commodities of internet marketing in today’s world. There has never been more proven value to anyone that search engine optimization offers. If you naturally or organically rank higher than your competition on Google and other search engines, you save much money. You are naturally picking up traffic that your competition would pay for thousands, hundreds of thousands, and millions of dollars in Pay Per Click advertising campaigns.
If you are seen more than your competition organically and get more traffic, this can make your sales skyrocket. But how does SEO work? Let’s go over how SEO works so you have a decent level of understanding and can take action right now to improve your website.
Search Engine Optimization Basics
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process used to optimize a website’s overall experience and link referrals so its pages can be findable, relevant, and popular towards user search queries. When done correctly, search engines like Google rank them better. It is a sector of your Digital Marketing that should not be left behind in your yearly marketing plan. Let’s ask one question about your website. Does your website offer a better overall experience than your competition? If you would say yes, then you should feel the benefit of traffic coming to your website. How SEO works around your website can be surprisingly easy to understand, but it is time-consuming to implement.
It is one of the most popular and sometimes intimidating commodities in digital marketing. Popular because of its value, and rough due to how many times search engines change. With this being said, SEO is and always will be a challenge for any marketing team and it should not be taken lightly.
How It Works
Search engines like Google pull a list of websites based on users’ search queries. On the page, there are several “widgets” that show a listing of pages. There are different ways search engines place website links on their widgets. Each widget’s algorithm allocates ranking determination and rules. There is one for Sponsored Ads, Maps, People Also Ask, Images, regular SERPs, etc. It is essential to understand that each has a different set of rules that determines the rank of website links.
When you wonder how SEO works, you need to understand that there are several important factors as to how your website ranks amongst your competitors. If your website is technically superior, your internal linking and navigation is easy to follow and convenient for your customer, content and tagging is done correctly, you are doing just a few things to rank higher. That does not include a rich Backlink Profile, how high your Domain Authority and Off-Page SEO is done. There are two different kinds of faculties that make the magic work. Let’s go over how SEO works on-page and how SEO works off-page.
On-Page
On-Page SEO is one faculty in SEO that determines how well you optimize your website pages. Several essential factors around your On-Page SEO determine your success. You want to make sure your website is performing on all cylinders. If it is not doing better than your competition, then your competitor has earned their rank above you. Websites require constant effort if you want to rank organically, so you need to make sure your web pages are performing at best. What exactly are these factors? Let’s go over some of the most critical factors for On-Page SEO.
Web Page Speed
One of the most important On-Page SEO Strategies is Website Speed. If your website is not fast, you are not providing a good experience. Users usually bounce and leave off of the website after a second and a half most of the time. So, if that is the case, then why would you want your web page to load more than 2 seconds? Some techniques you can do to optimize your web page speed can include Caching, Image Compression & Serving as Next-Generation Format, Minimizing & Combining CSS and JavaScript files, and having your website on a good server.
If your web page loads faster than others, you will have a higher chance of ranking higher than your competition.
Meta Data & Tagging
Are you reporting your data correctly? If you are not using metadata or adding alt text to your images, you may miss out on one of the most important factors of on-page SEO. Google and other search engines feed off of Meta Data, JSON-LD data, and whatever you tag on your images. Adding Metadata can be very easy; you can even add it using WordPress Plugins like Yoast. Yoast also provides service for Shopify as well. Otherwise, you may need to look into the <meta> HTML tags and implement them by hand on your app or custom-coded website.
If you are not using JSON-LD on your web pages, you are also missing out as there are opportunities to rank on Google Index like Jobs on Google, Shopping, and more. It is essential to have JSON-LD data reporting the page type and if it is Cornerstone content. If you are not tagging your Images properly, you also miss out on an essential SEO Trick.
Navigation & Internal Linking
Let’s put it this way: if you are not helping your customer or viewer navigate your website easily, why would that happen? They would likely leave because the website either may be confusing or they have to put a good amount of effort to get to where they would like. When creating a successful website, you want to make sure your website is easy to navigate.
Ensure you link to other relevant pages on your website to other pages that may further help your customer solve their problem. This strategy is also known as Internal Linking. You can do this by adding links on your vocabulary or text, buttons, pictures, and even your primary navigation system. You want to ensure your customer can find any way to solve their problem on your website that builds trust and, eventually, makes a sale!
Superior Content
If you are working to rank for a “keyword” on Google, you know that you can’t talk about five different things on one page targeting the said keyword. Is your copy helping your customer solve their problem? Check your competition and see how they are talking to your customers or following. Are they doing better or worse than you? If they are ranking higher than you, the truth is they may likely be doing better than you, and it is time to analyze and see how you can do better.
Superior Website copy helps your customer and, therefore, helps Google help your customer find you. Consequently, it eventually enables you to get more customer acquisition opportunities because you are naturally ranking for well-written copy optimized for your customers. When writing copy, you want to solve the problem, not create more. Be clear and concise, mention your keyword regularly and not too much, use relative images and tag them properly, and now you are telling a good story. Search engines love good stories! Also – be organic and yourself, do not get caught in the AI SEO Paradigm.
Additional Technical SEO Enhancements
Just to add a few more worthy mentions about your website ranking with on-page strategy, lets talk about more technical specifications. There are many on-page strategies that would take more than this article to discuss, and we will be writing many more to help you on your SEO Journey.
Security is one major aspect. If your website is not resolving as HTTPS, then you are not securing your customer data safely enough. You won’t rank higher if you are not protecting your customers data on their browser and device. HTTPS is there to secure your users when filling out Online Orders and Forms. If your website is not resolved in HTTPS, you are putting your customers at risk for hackers to siphon sensitive device information from your customers.
Another thing to consider.
Off-Page
When you are just improving what is on your website, you may also want to think about how it appears to the web externally. Sounds confusing. This is a strange corner on how SEO works, but trust me, when you get to the end of this, it’ll make sense.
Let us go to the human level to how Off-Page SEO connotates to your website. Basically think you are going to a job interview, and Google is the interviewer. When Google or the interviewer judges your resume, you want to look impressive, not only based on your qualifications. You also want to have referrals verifying your qualifications. Having great referrals gets you more opportunity to establish more “trust” with the interviewer. The higher “authority” or well known the person that is referring you is, the higher the chance the interviewer trusts you. The more the trust, the likelihood of you getting the job is very high! So let’s go back how this works on your website.
Referring Domains
Referring domains are other domains that provide links to your website on their own website. Think of a domain as a person. This person is guiding you to Google and is giving you and your content more credibility. Getting more valuable referrals takes your website to a new plane of reality with an insane amount of organic lead acquisition opportunities available.
Backlinks
Now, if this person who is referring you likes you, they might even give their testimony about you more than once. Think backlinks are how many times your webpage is linked to another website. The referring domain is there, but you could be on their website hundreds if not thousands, of times if they “like” you enough. The more backlinks, the more credibility you are getting from Google.
Domain Authority
Domain Authority is another massive piece to your Off-Page SEO strategy puzzle. Think of the Elon Musk referring you to a job. That’s a major news website or Wikipedia referring to your article or web page as a credible source for the topic at hand. You want the most plausible “domains” to refer to your website, as that will get you more brownie points for ranking. The higher the “authority” of the domain, the more chance you will rank higher on Google.
How To Succeed
Well, the first thing you can do right now for an Off-Page SEO Strategy, is to make sure your On-Page is credible enough. You certainly would not want another website to refer you if you are not following the rules and giving your current traffic an excellent experience. It is a waste of time. Get you On-Page SEO at the best capacity, and then start with effective Off-Page Strategies. Next, make sure your Internet Listings are filled out; this can consist of Listing Websites such as NextDoor, the BBB, Yelp, Google Business, and many more. If you get this done, you are having credible sources link back to your website and providing more official credibility to Google and other search engines.
Next, another good move, is to make sure you get a decent social media following. Social media opens many good chapters. When you have a fantastic content marketing strategy on your social media, implemented on a good On-Page strategy for your website, it opens these chapters. The chapters can be other businesses that want to feature in a listing, competition, feature and other content that helps them and helps you.
Off-Page Is Not Easy
Then the hard part. Our own Client Relations Specialists do this on a daily basis. You will need to find other publications, articles, or other sources online that have a good authority score in your line of work. Once you do, you will need to find the contact info of the Website Manager and manually reach out to them to talk about your content and how it can help their customers solve their problems. That is what this is all about. If your message is good enough, they will reach back out to you and start working on this great collaboration. It is a very long-term strategy, but very useful overtime! The return on investment generates terrific results.
Lastly, check on your Domain’s Toxicity levels. You do not want “bad” referrals from domains with toxicity. Make sure you are constantly protecting your domain from Toxic links and communicate with Google and other search engines to establish more trust. Make sure that your Referring Domains link to correct pages and that the links work. Ensure that you actually get linked as well on these other websites. Finally, do not “buy” backlinks, Google will catch on to it, and will flag your domain. And that right there, is a very hard battle to get out of.
Regarding how SEO works, Off-Page can always be a tough cookie. Especially when you are just starting your business.
What Makes a Successful Website
Now that you have a basic understanding of how SEO works, you now know that a Successful Website not only does the bare minimum of a good user interface and ease-of-use features, but that it is also following the rules and will help your customer! If your website’s user interface is easy to follow, with colors and images complimenting the topic, you have a successful web page.
Your website also needs to be fast, convenient on all devices and has content that really solves your customer’s problems. If you follow these principles and regularly work on a website, search engines will eventually reward you! Constantly monitor your progress and constantly pay attention to Google updates, and it will delight you on the benefits you will receive.
How To Improve Your SEO
Now that you have a good understanding on how SEO works and what makes a successful website, now it is time to improve your SEO. Check your current rankings on Google and other search engines by following this article to start your journey. Have a good On-Page and fantastic Off-Page strategy, and do it in good order, and you will be on your way.
Concluding
I will be remiss if I concluded this basic article about how SEO works by saying be patient! It is suggested that it can take 90-120 days to succeed on an SEO Campaign. Trust the process, have fun, and do not let the bad days get to you. It is like a swing effect, and it will not always be perfect. If you are simply following the principles on what it takes to succeed in an SEO Campaign, then you should not worry.
This is not a race, it is a marathon and it takes good time to rank on search engines organically. You can’t cheat a diet, and most importantly, you cannot cheat with Google! It is essential to remember that you cannot follow rash moves to get you to rank organically because the punishment is massive. Just remember to have fun! That is all there is to it!
SEO Experts Prepared To Take Things To The Next Level
I would also be remiss if we did not mention our terrific Website Design & SEO Services that elevate website performance on Google and other search engines. Our team is passionate and lives for constant improvement in our websites. If you would like us to walk you through your website or new website, we can surely provide you with checklists and a game plan on how it can be done today!
