Are you a business owner and tired of trying to attract visitors for your website?
OR
Are you an aspiring digital marketing professional, trying to learn the nitty-gritty of generating traffic and leads for a website?
In either cases, the first and foremost thing that you need to learn is how to generate organic traffic. Now, what does organic traffic imply? Well, to put it simply, when people search for something online and come across your website through the search engine, it is termed as organic traffic.
So, the next question in your mind must be ‘how do I do it?’ Simple, design your website and make it live. Easy peasy. Right? WRONG.
There are various factors that affect organic traffic and whether you’re a business owner or a digital marketing professional, you need to be aware of these factors to drive healthy organic traffic.
This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes to the picture. In a nutshell, SEO can be defined as a set of techniques to boost your website’s ranking in the search engine result pages (SERP). Sounds a bit ambiguous. Isn’t it?
Don’t worry, in this blog, we will walk through the basics of search engine optimization (SEO) and find out why it is important. Let’s explore.
What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Search engine optimization or SEO refers to a set of rules to optimize your website in a way that appears in the top results of a search engine query. For example, if a user searches for ‘how to lose weight?’ on Google and your website comes up as the best suggestion for the query, congratulations you have used SEO effectively.
SEO is one of the most effective ways to enhance the quality of website and make it easier for the user to navigate. Besides, using a meticulous SEO will result in organic traffic, which comes free of cost.
Agreed, paid advertisements do ramp up the number of visitors on your website, however, per many statistics, it is observed that most of the website traffic comes via search engine queries and to get hold of such users, you need to effectively use SEO techniques.
In order to master the SEO game, you need to be aware of the various algorithms and algorithm changes that search engine uses to rank a website along with other factors such as content optimization and keywords among others.
Why is SEO important for your website?
As stated earlier, most of the website traffic comes via search engine queries, which makes SEO the most effective technique to drive traffic. In fact, statistics show that 93 percent of all online interaction starts with search engines. Now, this makes Google one of the most sought after avenues as it holds almost 70 percent of search engine market share.
Therefore, it is extremely crucial to develop an effective SEO strategy that conforms to Google’s algorithm. Not only will this pave the way for more traffic but also will augment the credibility of your website.
Besides, having an optimized website that ranks in the top positions of Google search pages is responsible for smooth running of your website, which is essential to stay ahead of competitors.
How? – Imagine you have created a website to sell homemade pickle and there are many other websites that do the same. Now, you have optimized your website and it ranks higher than others in the Google search pages. Who do you think is going to attract the customers? I think you get the idea.
Now, I believe you have a fair idea how SEO works and why is it so important for a website. Let’s move on and dig deeper.
What are the types of SEO and how to use them?
Search engine optimization is an ever-dynamic playfield and to master this art, you will have to stay on top of the latest trends, consumer behavior, google algorithm changes and many more.
In order to simplify this complex entity, SEO is categorized into three types:
- Technical SEO
- On-page SEO
- Off-page SEO
Don’t get overwhelmed by the terminology. We will cover each one of them and after you get acquainted, you would certainly breath a sigh of relief. So let’s begin.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is the first leg of the entire SEO process. As the name suggests, this has no relation with the actual content of the website or the various methods used for website promotion. Instead, technical SEO deals with various settings, codes, and other configurations needed to make the job of search engine crawler easier.
Well, you may now ask what now is a crawler. To give you a brief idea a search engine crawler is a robot that finds relevant content and keeps them in a huge database, from where information is divulged on request (online searches).
Usually, once the technical SEO is configured, you don’t have to worry about again. It is not dynamic compared to the other types.
On-page SEO
Marking the second stage of the SEO process, on-page SEO deals with everything related to content and other elements of the website. Unlike technical SEO, the key role of on-page optimization is to make the search engine crawler understand the meaning and context of your website content.
In this stage, you will have to deal with content optimization, SEO keywords, website structure, title optimization, headings, structured data makeup and other techniques so that your website content is picked up by the crawler.
Off-page SEO
The last and the final leg of the SEO process is off-page SEO. In this stage, you will deal with all kinds of ways to augment website traffic, which is beyond the website itself.
Off-page SEO refers to all the techniques used to promote the website besides content optimization and search engine ranking. This includes paid promotion, social media promotion, backlinks, and others.
How much does SEO cost?
Uptill now, you must have gained insights into the world of SEO and how it works, now it’s time to answer the big question – how much does SEO cost?
While this question looks relevant to business owners only, even working professionals and aspiring digital marketing managers too need to ponder over this.
To provide a straight answer to this much asked question is very difficult. It is extremely important to understand that the cost of SEO services is dependent on a variety of factors such as size of website, target location, budget, and others.
It would be fair to evaluate the cost of SEO service on the basis of individual project and come up with a price matrix that conforms to the organizational budget.
If you really want to explore further about pricing, please visit External Experts’ website. We are decade-old digital marketing agency and we offer tailor made solutions for your every business need.
Conclusively, I would like to assume that you have got a fair amount of input pertaining to SEO techniques and why it is important. With this knowledge, you can start building an effective website that everyone loves to visit.