SEO 101 : Search Engine Optimization Demystified

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of enhancing a website’s qualities to increase the amount of user traffic directed to that website via a search engine like Google or Bing. More specifically, it involves improving aspects of your website’s technical structure, content offerings, and linking popularity to make that site more search friendly. And a more search-friendly site gives us something we all want: more business.??

In the 21st century, brands that win on the internet tend to win customers. Period. If you want proof, do a couple of Google searches and you’ll find that the brands you know and love are using SEO to position themselves at the top of search results, ultimately driving more traffic to their website and, in turn, more business.??

What is Search??

A search query is the most intuitive way for a user to find what they’re looking for on the internet. There are more than 8.5 billion (yes, billions with a "b”!) searches a day, just on Google alone.?

The search bar is a fundamental tool that has shaped the way we use the internet and create search queries. It allows a user to search a given database for whatever information they may be looking for, whether it’s the entire internet or a specific website. This includes questions, phrases, or even single keywords that will allow Google to determine where a user needs to be directed to find their answer.?

What is Organic Search???

Organic search refers to the non-sponsored listings that appear on a search engine results page (also known as SERP) after performing a query. Rather than being influenced by paid advertising, these results are determined based on algorithmic decisions that a search engine has deemed most important to a user’s needs and experience.??

Organic traffic is important to businesses for this exact reason – it offers users a targeted search result, meaning businesses who earn their traffic know they’re getting a quality potential user.?

SEO Best Practices: EEAT?

The goal in SEO is to understand the organic search algorithm and implement its most important attributes into your website – doing so will earn your business a top spot in the SERP for a given keyword search, which in turn generates a high percentage of user traffic to your website.?

Google (and most other search engines) currently lists four main factors that it looks for in a website – Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust. Among SEO experts, these attributes are better known as EEAT:?

• Experience: Does this business have experience in the industry??
• Expertise: Is this business considered an expert in the category that the search is referring to??
• Authoritativeness: Is this business such an expert that it is referenced by other websites as a go-to for information on the topic??
• Trust (the main metric that Google is looking to measure): Does this website fulfill all three categories above, providing everything a user is asking for and perhaps even more??

Being able to earn Google’s confidence in all four categories will earn your website a high placement for nearly any search that relates to your business.??

However, getting your website to that status takes some time and involves more than sending a “pretty please” and a basket of goodies to Google’s main office.??

SEO Content?

To build an SEO-friendly website, you need to create original, informative content. It’s how Google determines if your website is relevant for a user’s search as well as if you’re experienced enough to provide the type of answer that their user is looking for.?

Being able to create educational, search-friendly content will allow you to not only capture the attention of your consumer, but also convert them into a paying customer.??

However, to do so, you have to start by determining the sort of keywords your consumer is using in their internet search. That’s where keyword research comes in.???

Doing Keyword Research?

It’s important to consider your brand, its mission, and the type of info someone might come to you for if they needed guidance when doing keyword research. Doing so will ensure that you’re getting targeted users who have a high likelihood of using your product.??

You wouldn’t want someone in search of a new car to come to your tire replacement website – new tires are not what they’re looking for, so it’s unlikely that they will end up converting to a sale.?

Using platforms like Semrush or Ahrefs, you can create an extensive list of keywords that you can target in your content. The keywords that you decide to target will be the basis for the content of your website, carefully chosen and catered to match the needs of your consumer.??

However, certain keyword searches may be used with different intentions than others. We’ll explain.?

Capturing and Converting Your Audience?

There are billions of keyword combinations out there, each with a different estimated monthly search volume (or MSV, for short). While more vague keywords like “car dealer” might have 45,000 searches a month, a more focused search such as “best used car dealer near me” might have 880 searches a month.??

Both are equally valuable, but serve different purposes.??

Although ranking highly for “car dealer” might earn you the attention of 45,000 users a month, those users may simply be looking through their options, not ready to decide or purchase yet. Seeing your name in the search results may help them trust you as an authority, but is less likely to lead to a conversion because based on their search behavior they are still early on in their research process.?

Alternatively, ranking highly for “best used car dealer near me” might only garner the attention of 880 users, but those users are likely further along the buyer journey – they’ve decided they want to buy a used car and are now searching for the best dealer in their area.??

In SEO, your goal is to rank highly for both. This is how you get multiple funnels of potential customers and ultimately earn more business. But earning those high SERP rankings requires more than just helpful content – you must also have a website that’s fast, easy to use, and is trusted by others in the industry.?

Technical SEO: What is it??

Even if your website has the most informative content on the worldwide web, it’s no use to someone if they can’t find it or access it. Additionally, if you don’t have the backing of peers in the industry or trusted internet voices, it’s unlikely that someone will consider you an authority on the topic. This is what makes technical SEO so important.?

Having an optimized, user-friendly website involves several aspects, but most commonly comes down to three core attributes: site speed, backlinking, and tagging.?

Site Speed?

In our busy, “I-need-it-now” world, speed is (almost) everything.??

Nobody wants to wait for a web page to load, especially to find out that the page itself doesn’t even provide the type of information they’re looking for. Google and other search engines are looking to help their users avoid this kind of time-wasting experience, which is why site speed directly impacts their web crawlers’ page-ranking decisions?

By using services like Google Lighthouse, web developers can see just how fast their website is running. These sorts of services will often provide you with a grade or rating based on current industry standards and offer recommendations on how to fix any issues.?

Large images and videos can slow down the load time on a page, while 404 errors and other issues only serve to ruin a user’s experience on your website. Cleaning up errors like this will not only help you rank higher on Google, but will also make your website more seamless for users who are ... well, using it.?

Backlinking Strategy?

A foundational pillar to generating web authority, backlinking is a crucial part of any SEO strategy. While links within your own website (known as internal links) can help a user easily navigate from one page to the next, links from others in your industry (known as external links), as well as those from reputable news outlets, can go a long way in making you a “trustworthy” hub for content. But doing so requires some work.??

Internal linking is the easy part – it involves finding linkable chunks of copy that can help lead a user from one area of your website to another. Doing this helps provide the user with context for what they’re reading and gives them multiple pathways from one page to others that may be helpful to them. For example, if you want to find out about the sister of SEO, search engine marketing (or SEM,) we have a piece on that as well.?

External links can be a little more difficult – they often require contacting other websites via email/phone and requesting that they add a link to your website within one of their own pieces. This works well if other companies are referencing your name in their content or even referencing an individual piece of web content that you’ve created.?

Alt Tags and Metadata?

Often overlooked on many websites, alt tagging and metadata can be instrumental in creating a better user experience, sometimes before a user even comes to your website. But what do these terms mean??

Alt tags are very similar to image captions, but with a caveat: these captions live in the coding of the image rather than on the screen for all to see. Because of this, alt tags are very useful to Google’s search crawlers, allowing them to see if all images on a single page are relevant to one another or, more specifically, if those images all relate to the same topic that the content of the page is about.?

Alt tags also serve to help users with visual disabilities. Think of these captions as a form of digital braille – users who require more accessibility to the content can scroll over the image, and their device will read the caption aloud to them.?

Metadata is a bit different. If you’ve ever gone on Google, metadata is the copy that appears when a search result shows up:?

• A meta title is the “headline” that appears in the SERP telling you the name of the page that’s appeared, often next to the brand name.?
• A meta description is the short bit of gray copy found underneath the title that provides a short summary or snippet of the content of the page itself.?

Be sure to look into industry standards around character count and subject matter when it comes to each of these tagging practices. There are loads of tips and tricks on how to optimize these practices to make things as simple as possible for your users.?

Looking to optimize your website for search?

Phew. We’ve covered a lot here, so if you’re looking to become an SEO expert, be sure to use this article as a foundation for anything you may learn beyond this.??

Clearly there’s a lot that goes into properly optimizing your website for search. Remember, you won't see results overnight with SEO, it's a long play that takes time to build, but with regular investments into your SEO practice, you will reap the benefits with more traffic and better leads.

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Not sure where to start with your SEO? You came to the right place.?Drop us a line ?and tell us how we might be able to help you rank higher in your paid search results.?