Beginner’s Guide to SEO

For any company, creating a strong online presence is important. It doesn’t matter which field they pertain to, a large amount of the audience is present online.

The internet is full of opportunities, however, it’s difficult to create a foothold right away, it takes a while before you are even a noticeable entity on any search engine. It all boils down to the traffic you can generate and the response you can garner which in turn will boost your visibility.

SEO or Search engine optimization is a term coined together to describe the techniques that a website should use to boost its rankings on a search engine.

93% of users begin their internet journey from a search engine, which makes it crucial for a website to be easily found.

Why is SEO so important?

I am sure plenty of people will agree that whenever they have used Google as a search engine they usually just scan through the first result page, which is why being on that first page is very pivotal for a website. This is when SEO comes into the picture, SEO boosts the visibility as well traffic of the website if employed correctly. This is why it’s crucial for any website/business -

It’s a branding technique that everyone is employing, which includes all your competitors.
SEO is very cost effective and provides good ROI (Return on investment). It is better than PPC and Social media marketing.
Almost everybody these days virtually checks product reviews before going for the buy. Without good SEO, they will have a hard time locating you which will automatically affect your performance.
It will help your business grow and reach the audience that you otherwise wouldn’t have been able to target.

Various aspects of SEO –

1) On-Site optimization – This involves making your website user as well as search engine friendly. This essentially refers to the factors that affect your website rankings on the search engine. Such as the required tags, Keyword density etc.

2) Off – Site optimization – This means achieving search engine optimization with the help of sources other than your own website. Google in most cases determines the rank of your website, being the number one search engine. Having your links appear on larger platforms can also boost up your visibility as well as attract a lot of traffic, which will automatically increase your rank on the search engine too.

What is White Hat and Black Hat SEO?

One of the most commonly asked questions, White hat SEO in layman’s language is applying the right techniques along with a legal approach to boost your ranking and increase your popularity. This can be achieved by link building, keyword analysis, user-friendly URLs, avoiding plagiarisms and by following the guidelines of the search engines.

Black Hat SEO, on the other hand, is the complete opposite of white hat SEO, this refers to employing illegal techniques and strategies. Black hat SEO practice involves breaking all the rules and regulations of the search engine. Some common black hat techniques are – invisible texts, page swapping, keyword stuffing.

The effects of Black hat SEO are temporary, it doesn’t take the search engine long before it spots these illegal strategies and then penalizes you; the search engine may spam your links and if you continue with these malpractices the search engine will altogether block your site and links. White hand SEO gives slow but long term results.

What is the Key aspect of SEO?

Everything you employ to optimize SEO is secondary to the content of your site. Content is the defining element of SEO. Producing good content will automatically increase your rankings by bringing traffic. Search engines love fresh content, which is why if your website keeps generating good content you are more likely to last in the long run and perk up your rankings.

To conclude it all, SEO is just there to optimize your website and to bring in traffic and increase your website/blog/online store’s visibility. This will make the search engine give you a higher ranking and make you popular. SEO will also help you achieve your purpose, it is a promotional tool that doesn’t sleep.