Search engine optimization (SEO) can appear to be a chore. However, if you own a business, it can be one of the best ways to get your company found online. It provides a more cost-effective source of consistent organic traffic than other options. And believe me, once you figure it out, you’ll realise it wasn’t so difficult after all. In fact, after a while, you’ll probably fall in love with SEO. If you are looking for SEO services, you can find some of the best digital marketing companies that act as an SEO Agency in London.
What is SEO?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the art and science of driving organic (unpaid) traffic to your website via search engines. It entails, among other things, making changes to your website to make it more appealing to search engines, which will reward you with higher rankings based on the quality and relevance of your content.
For example, one of the many factors Google uses to rank your website is the creation and optimization of high-quality content on your website to include specific keywords that are relevant to what users are searching for. The difficult part is determining what else you need to do. Google scores and ranks your website based on hundreds of variables. The four categories that search engines use to rank your site are used to break down the essential concepts of SEO. The categories are referred to as the four pillars of SEO.
On-Page SEO:
Optimizing your website could mean a variety of things, such as increasing its performance, improving usability, or inserting keywords into the copy. The following are the primary on-site elements that must be “optimised,” or improved, for users and search engines:
Titles and meta descriptions: Tags in the header of each webpage that appear on search engine results pages.
H1 – H6 tags: The headers that divide your content into easy-to-read sections. These tags are recognised by search engines as the header of a page or section of content.
Alternative text: A heading for images provides a written description of an image to search engines. Alt text is first and foremost a principle of accessibility, but it also aids search engines in determining what to mean.
Internal links: These enable search engines and website visitors to easily navigate to other pages on your site. The clickable text (anchor text) on a given link conveys the context and meaning of an internal link.
Structured data: These are code snippets that provide search engines with specific information about the content of a webpage. It also enables them to place webpages in the appropriate context in search results.
Off-Page SEO:
Off-page SEO refers to anything you do outside of your website to improve your search visibility. Off-page SEO requires you to tell search engines what other people think of your website, which is where backlinks come in. Backlinks are links to your website hosted on other sites. Sometimes you can get backlinks without doing anything, but if your company has a smaller online presence, you’ll often have to work harder to get backlinks.
Backlinks can indicate the authority of your website, so it’s critical to create a web of quality backlinks. While purchasing backlinks may be tempting, search engines penalise websites with a high volume of spammy backlinks. So, when it comes to backlinks, prioritise quality over quantity.
Technical SEO:
Technical SEO may appear to be intimidating, but what we are talking about is ensuring that a search engine can read your content and explore your site. The content management system you use will handle much of this, and tools like Screaming Frog and Deep Crawl can explore your website and highlight technical issues.
Crawled by Google, indexing web pages, mobile adaptability, page loading speed, tech-friendly site, and structured hierarchical content are the main factors to consider here. If you run a small business and use WordPress for your website, technical SEO should be at the top of your priority list. If you have a large, custom website with millions of pages, technical SEO becomes much more critical.
Much of what is referred to as “technical SEO” in this context is part of the design and development of your website. The trick is to make sure your developer understands the relationship between website design, development, and SEO, as well as how to build a lightning-fast, mobile-optimized site.
Local SEO:
Local SEO is our final search engine optimisation pillar. Local SEO is a search engine optimisation strategy that helps your business appear more prominently in Google searches in your local market. If your company has a physical location, local SEO can help you attract more customers to your store. Local SEO can also benefit your company if you provide services in a specific geographic area. Google has developed software to assist you in managing your business in the context of your local market. This is Google’s ‘My Business’ software.
Summary:
We understand that SEO can be intimidating, but break it down into its four pillars and tackle it one at a time. On-page, off-page, technical, and local SEO are all simple to optimise once you have the right tools and techniques in place. We hope this post has helped you understand some aspects of search engine optimization and get started on making the most of your content! If you decided to improve your business and make your website SEO optimized, then contact an SEO agency near you and start the journey of digital marketing for your company.