SEO Basics & Link Building

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which according to MOZ’s SEO 101, is a strategy used to improve website traffic, by ensuring that when a user Googles a product or service, using specific keywords, they are able to find and utilize your website.?

This means knowing and understanding your audience and delivering what they want and need so that when they decide to turn to Google and type in keywords related to their problem, your website is the first to show up.

Making Content User-Centric

Google’s acronym, EEAT, (formerly known as EAT) for a quality website that stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust. E-E-A-T is used as a concept of the quality of a website’s content. In order to ensure that users see content that fulfills their intent, but lets them feel confident that the information they found is accurate.?

• Experience: This looks into the author's first hand-experience that may differentiate them from those who are experts.?
• Expertise: The accreditation and knowledge that the website or author has about a subject. This can be in the form of a professional degree, or work experience.
• Authoritativeness: Viewed through the reputation and gained by industry recognition. When one is considered a leader in their industry, their level of authority is high.
• Trustworthiness: You want to make sure you have returning visitors and to ensure this your website must be trustworthy, which can be earned through security transactions, engagement, and supporting sources.?

Why should you care about SEO?

SEO is important because when used correctly it can lead to an increase in website traffic, and improve the user experience, which can lead to increased engagement and conversions. Most Importantly search engine optimization can lead to brand awareness.

How can you use SEO?

Search engines are answer machines, they provide information in an organized manner and provide relevant results to questions searched by users.?

Search engines work via three primary functions:

• Crawling: This is the discovery process where search engines send out Googlebots, known as crawlers or spiders. In a matter of seconds, these Googlebots search the Internet for relevant content and proceed to display it to the user.
• Indexing: Googlebots organize the content found during the crawling process into an index where discovered pages are stored. Once a page is in the index, it’s likely to be displayed as a result of relevant queries in a search.
• Ranking: Googlebots provide the pieces of content that will best answer a searcher’s query, which means that results are ordered from most relevant to least relevant. If there is no longer content that is related to a particular query then the URL will drop in rank.?

Link building plays an important role in bringing in organic traffic, and is very effective when combined with strong SEO foundations.?

What is Link Building?

Link building is the process of strategic placement of hyperlinks from other websites to your own. It is convenient for users to navigate from page to page, and allows for Googlebots to crawl between websites, creating a link between your individual page to external websites.?

How do search engines use links?

1. Discovery: websites that ween’t on the index could be relevant and new. These can be used later for a different search query
2. Ranking: This helps search engines rank pages based on results and how relevant the content is to a query.

Why learn about Link Building?

Linking is beneficial to improving engagement and conversions, such that the relative advantages will create awareness of a new product or service you offer.

• Establishing relationships: builds strong outreach to other relevant websites in the industry, which can create connections with others people in the industry.
• Impact on referral traffic: builds on and improves leads and sales.
• Brand Building: link building can grow your brand and establish you as an authority.

How to build your Links?

Competition is strong and dividing screen time with other companies can be complex. Blog post. Among a long list, MOZ’s Link Building & Establishing Authority guide recommends:

• Publishing a blog that generates conversation across the web
• Use current links with up-to-date content and renew links. Replace with more recent information.?
• Be newsworthy to create buzz around a new product

How SEO Affects the Travel Industry

The travel industry is a broad area, concerned with providing a service related to travel from one location to another. The intersection between the travel industry and SEO is very interesting. Travel up until the 1960s was considered a luxury few could afford, even after the introduction of economy seating. Since then, there have been various ways to book flights, from calling the airline, to hiring a travel agency with connections and knowledge in the industry, to today’s online booking sites.?

With the most recent shifts in the digital landscape, booking flights and travel has never been easier or more competitive. EEAT directly impacts this industry, where sites like Expedia, Kayak, and Trip Advisor, have earned consumers' trust to catalog their desired itinerary and booking preferences.?

A quick Google search for “travel websites” yielded a long list of online services that provide booking and itinerary management services.