SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is methodology of strategies, techniques and tactics used to get traffic from the “free”, “organic”, “editorial” or “natural” search results on search engines. In other words, we can say that it is a process of optimizing online content in order to get on the top of the searches. This optimization process is performed to get high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.
Let me explain this more comprehensively. Thanks to Internet, most of the information is not accessed through search engines. If you are searching something, using google (approx. 90 percent people use google), then you enter a query in a search engine and hit ‘enter’. You will get list of web results that containing that query term. These are called as “search results”. In most of the cases, users like to visit websites that are at the top of this list as they perceive those to be more relevant to the query. If you have ever wondered why some of these websites rank better than the others then you must know that it is because of a powerful web marketing technique called Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Thus, we can say that SEO is a technique or host of activities which are used to optimize a website so that search engine bots consider your website as relevant, provide it a place in top results and rank your site higher than the millions of other sites in response to a search query. Thus, SEO helps in fetching organically.
Have you ever thought why SEO is important?
Well, SEO helps in making your reach to the targeted audience. Lots of people search for different things. That traffic can be extremely powerful for a business. Further, selling online doesn’t confine you to a particular location as in case of brick and mortar store. Having good ranking in the searches with relevant keywords help you to attract intended buyers.
Furthermore, the search engine bots are getting smarter day by day. Major search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc are improving their algorithm in order provide relevant results to the searchers. Having an SEO optimized website increases the probability to rank in the top of the searches. The search results are all about relevancy. You can attract all the visitors in the world, but if they’re coming to your site because Google tells them you’re a resource for Apple computers when really you’re a farmer selling apples, that is not quality traffic. SEO helps in providing you relevant or quality traffic.
The search engines are getting smarter in order to show results that are related to the search keywords. For this, search engines crawl the Web, get an idea what a site is about. Search engines perform several activities crawling, indexing, & processing in order to calculate relevancy so that they provides accurate results for the searches.
Search Engine Optimization of website ensures that bots or spiders get complete information about your website so that they can fetch it whenever related keywords are searched. Thus, through this process, you try to prove to search engines about the content (what your website is all about?) of your website.
SEO helps in providing you a place in the top of the searches. There are billions and billions of web pages available on same content. Which web-page will get the top spot? It is decided by some of the algorithms of the search engines. By using optimization techniques, webmasters attract bots or spiders to tell them that this particular page is all about this keyword. If your page get high relevancy score then you will get placement in the top searches.
As far as my personal experience is concerned, I believe that SEO is dynamic. What does it mean? It means that in order to provide highly accurate results, Search Engine Algorithms are changing. So, what is providing useful for you right now in getting results may not prove beneficial in the upcoming years. So, SEO is evolving and you need to be updated every time.
An overview and definitions are covered now. In the next blog, I will cover different aspects of SEO. Meanwhile an Off-Page SEO tip for you. Submit Guest Post of high authority websites to improve visibility and ranking.