In the know about SEO

Knowing SEO basics is essential for increasing your web traffic and visibility.

Search engine optimization (SEO) can be a very effective marketing tool for any business. In fact, according to Terakeet, SEO can help reduce the cost of advertising and obtaining new customers by 87.41 per cent. This strategy can be useful for small businesses that do not have the funding for other marketing options. 

With so many terms and concepts to learn, researching this topic can be overwhelming at first. However, simply understanding the fundamentals can make it easier for you to get your website out there. 

Keep reading to learn more about the basics of SEO and how it can benefit any small business.   

SEO 

SEO is the process of improving a website to increase its visibility on search engines. Every time a person inputs a search into a search engine, a series of results pop up on multiple pages. The goal with SEO is to get a website as high up on the first page as possible. Higher visibility means a website will be seen by more people — more potential customers for a business.    

SEO can also help businesses boost brand awareness, which refers to the target audience’s familiarity with a particular brand. The more people see a business’s website through effective SEO, the more likely they will recognize the brand and become customers.   

According to the Digital Marketing Institute, there are three key components of SEO, all of which are types of optimizations: technical, on-page and off-page. Technical optimization refers to SEO in ways that are behind the scenes, such as submitting a sitemap to Google. On-page optimization means ensuring that a site’s content is relevant to what users are looking for, using keywords throughout a website to help increase visibility. Off-page optimization involves increasing a site’s visibility through activities outside the site itself. This is mostly done by setting up high-quality backlinks to build up and maintain a site’s reputation.   

Backlinks 

A backlink, also called an external link, is a link to your website posted on another site. Backlinks not only improve a site’s reach, but they also increase the site’s reputation. With backlinks, quality always beats quantity. A few high-quality backlinks are far better than a handful of low-quality ones.  

For the best possible quality, a backlink must be natural, meaning site owners should voluntarily choose to place a link to your website on theirs. If search engine algorithms detect that a site owner was paid or manipulated in some way into including a backlink, then the link is considered poor in quality. An effective backlink must also be reputable, meaning the site it came from should be in good public standing. If a backlink does not come from a reputable source, users cannot trust your site to be reputable either.

Finally, a backlink should be relevant to a site’s domain and the page where the link is found. For example, if the website of an artist’s portfolio is featured on a business blog that covers local artists, the backlink will have page relevancy (since the specific blog post is about art). It will not, however, top domain relevancy (since the website as a whole is about business). Both page and domain relevancy are required for a quality backlink.  

SERP 

When a user inputs a search query into Google, the results are known as search engine results pages (SERPs). Google’s SERPs show both paid and organic results. Paid placements are more or less given to the highest bidder, and these are often not the focus for small businesses. Instead, small businesses should aim to be seen among organic results. These placements are “earned” as they are determined to be the most relevant to a given search based on Google’s algorithm.  

Obtaining higher organic placements among SERPs largely involves the use of keywords throughout a website. Keywords are any terms added to a website to improve the site’s visibility. Keywords and phrases help Google’s algorithm determine which sites best match any given search. Ranking higher with certain keywords allows users to see your website more easily. The process of researching keywords requires quite a bit of work and often much trial and error, so make sure to keep your site updated with the most effective keywords.  

EEAT 

Google uses the EEAT system to determine the relevancy of a site to any given search. The acronym was originally only EAT, which stood for expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness — qualities needed to ensure a site’s relevancy. In December 2022, Google added a second ‘E’ to the acronym for ‘experience.’ According to Google, a user may want information on a product or place from someone who has used or visited it. In other words, someone with firsthand experience. Thus, the EEAT system is now used. 

Websites should demonstrate EEAT to increase visibility on search engines. The Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab provides 10 guidelines for building and maintaining a site’s credibility, such as these: 

• Make it easy to verify the accuracy of your site’s information 
• Make it easy to contact you 
• Updates your site’s content regularly  

Effective SEO can greatly benefit any business by improving its online visibility to grow its customer base. However, keep in mind that this is only an introduction to SEO. Each topic discussed here can easily be explained in more depth, and there are several other topics to explore. Continue to learn more about how SEO can help your business thrive.