Search Engine Optimisation, aka, SEO has always been the fancy of marketers and digital marketers, alike. Some say SEO is dead, some say, SEO has lost its relevance. On the contrary, a few learned people claim it as a cakewalk! Irrespective of what everyone says, the harsh reality is that no one actually knows what exactly Google is looking for!
NO, we do not mean to say that learned digital marketers across the globe don’t know what SEO is; all we say is that Google has not published a link that contains all the guidelines on how to rank on page 1. Instead, whatever we hear about this magic bullet is all the result of years of hard work from digital marketers trying decoding Google algorithm.
In this article today, we are going to explain you Search Engine Optimisation in a lucid manner and tell you the truth about this magic bullet, which many marketers are using as fallacy!
WHAT IS SEO?
Search Engine Optimisation, popularly known as SEO is the process of increasing the visibility of your website/pages of your website, in order to achieve Page 1 – SERP (Search Engine Result Page) ranking, using organic means. (see above screenshot for example of SERP – Search Engine Result Page). In simple words, it means to gain more visibility on search engines, without paying anything. Interesting? Isn’t it?
For detailed information on SEO, refer to https://www.lightscamerasocial.com/search-engine-optimisation/
TYPES OF SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION
- On-Page,
- Off-Page,
- Local.
On-Page is also known as on-site. It comprises of all the elements that a webmaster does to beautify the parameters on the website. For eg. – Improving the content of the webpages, adding alt-tag or alt-text to images, creating the meta title and meta description for the web-pages, website load time, etc.
Off-Page is also known as off-site. It comprises of all the factors that you do outside the vicinity of your website to gain popularity in search engines. For eg. – Guest posting, Web 2.0 properties, creating backlinks, etc…
Local refers to all the activities which promote local search based results or improve demographic listing on search engines.
It is difficult ot say which factor is the most important among the three, as SEO is the cumulative effect of all the three types mentioned above.
HOW SEARCH ENGINES WORK?
Some examples of search engines are Google, Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yandex, etc.
Search engines are content hungry. Content is the fuel for search engines. Better content drives more people to use a specific search engine and more traffic on search engines means more revenue for them, via advertising.
There are two important terms which one must remember – CRAWLING & INDEXING.
Crawling is the process of scanning the pages of your website via automated scripts known as bots, spiders or robots. Have you ever wondered that millions of new websites are created everyday – how does Google know about those websites? The answer lies in crawling. Consider crawlers as agents of a search engine, which are working 365*24*7, scanning new content over the World Wide Web. Whenever a new domain is hosted on the web, search engine crawlers scan the content of the website and report it back to the search engine.
Post that, the search engine using some quality parameters checks if that particular webpage is worthy to be listed or indexed in its database. If it is, it is added to a particular search engine’s database, if not, it is rejected by the search engine. The process of listing the webpages of your website in a search engine’s database is known as Indexing.
In short, Indexing is not a right, its a privilege.
Let’s say your webpages are indexed on Google. This does not guarantee that your website will appear on search terms related to your industry. Google has billions of webpages on a specific industry. Thus, your website will appear like a drop in the ocean. But, not to worry, here is where SEO comes into picture.
Using SEO techniques, slowly and gradually you can build trust for your website in the eyes of a search engine. The more trust a search engine has on your webpage content, the chances of your website ranking on that particular search engine increases.
THE TRUTH ABOUT SEO
While many marketing agencies and SEO practitioners will scare you with a long checklist about what needs to be done in SEO and how it will make you popular and rich and what not! The truth is SEO is not a magic bullet. It is magic indeed, when you start getting that much needed organic traffic on your website, but, it is not a bullet. SEO is time consuming and it take minimum 3-4 months of consistent hard work to notice the results. Its like body-building…takes time for the results to show.
IT FEELS A BIT COMPLICATED, STILL WHY DOES EVERYTONE RUN AFTER SEO???
Well, we would say there are two main reasons –
- It’s a hangover from the past
At one time, it was indeed true that you could catapult yourself to the number one position on Google, by doing fast and easy things. When the big ‘G’ was still in its relative infancy during the period between year 2000 and 2009, there were many back alleys to ranking. (in 2009, the so called ‘Penguin’ and ‘Panda’ updates were rolled out, which pointed towards the quality and quantity of backlinks and content, respectively)
One of the most famous ways was to have your target keyword repeated back to back in a wall of text that was the same color as the background (Black-Hat SEO technique). It was invisible to the visitors on the website, but was visible by search engine crawlers. The crawlers assumed that the webpage was informative and rich in keywords and thus helped that webpage to gain organic ranking.
These techniques were slowly, but gradually realised by Google crawlers and these don’t work anymore. As a matter of fact, Google is way way too sophisticated.
2. Magic bullets sell.
Picture a 3800 word online article about an SEO practice…all text and no images…BORING, right?
Now, compare it with a 1500 word article on the same topic, with lots of imagery, and a quirky headline like – “Double your organic traffic in 1 day!”
The former one is more likely to be clicked and read.
Same for users, same for Google.
I think you got the point.
IS SEO A ONE-TIME PROCESS
Absolute NO, SEO is an ongoing process. As soon as you stop doing SEO, your website ranking will begin to fall. Hence, one can conclude that SEO is a life time process and requires consistency.
The most important SEO factor –
Feeling lazy to even try?
We at Lights.Camera.Social – Digital Creative Agency in India, specialise in SEO services. Whether it’s curating top-notch content for your website or working on backlinks to improve your website ranking on search engines, we do it all.
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