What is SEO and Why it's Important?

We use Google search every day and hear a great deal of chatter about the importance of SEO.

But What is SEO and Why it's Important?

SEO is the reason why some websites get more traffic than others. It’s a competitive area of expertise and requires a deep understanding of marketing and psychology.

Webmasters are individuals who optimize website content and structure to rank it higher in search engine results. Search engines are always evolving and adopting new technologies to provide the best search results to the users. Webmasters need to consider and work on all aspects of SEO (on-page, off-page, content, and technical) for optimum results.

Google Webmaster is an online platform to track your website’s performance, find additional resources, and use Google search console. Some webmasters take shortcuts to rank higher (Black-hat techniques), but Google has a no-tolerance policy for such methods, and the website is penalized.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing a website to get organic traffic from a web search engine. SEO is a huge field. It requires a high level of creativity and innovation to keep up with the ever-changing industry practices.

How Search Engines Work:

Search engines work in three simple steps.

1. Crawling:

Search engines use web crawlers to explore the World Wide Web, discover websites, and create a copy of all available pages on it.

2. Indexing:

This copy of the data is added to the search engine index, used to analyze it, and information retrieval faster and more relevant for the user.

3. Ranking:

Search engines rank websites according to their relevance with a particular query and latest content.

Top 5 most popular Search Engines Worldwide:

The word search engine ultimately means Google to most people. We use Google every day, and it is undoubtedly the most reliable and efficient search engine.

It may be surprising to some readers, but other search engines are not as popular but cater to millions of queries every day.

In the search engine market, Google is the undisputed king. It holds about 81.5% of the total market share. Google is much more than just a search engine. It’s one of the top four tech giants alongside Amazon, Apple, and Facebook.

Total market share of Google as compared with other search engines.

(Image Source: reliablesoft.net)

Google, Bing, Baidu, Yahoo, and Yandex are the top five search engines, according to netmarketshare, Statista, and statcounter. Out of the five, Baidu and Yandex are specific to a particular language. The top three are used majorly in English but support other languages as well.

Search Engines market share worldwide — September 2019.

(Image Source: reliablesoft.net)

Google:

Google was created by the two Ph.D. students of Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. A search engine that ranked web pages based on their popularity and link relevancy.

It now dominates the search engine market in all countries and device types. Google uses the most sophisticated and complex algorithms to present the best search results to the user. When we talk about SEO, we’re mostly referring to Google’s search engine optimization.

Bing:

Bing is the second most popular search engine in the market, second only to Google. It’s owned by Microsoft Corporation and created in an attempt to challenge Google. It’s the default search engine in Windows PCs and available in 40 languages.

Yahoo:

If you’re over twenty, then you must be familiar with Yahoo. It was the first popular search engine and web portal on the web.

Back in the 90s, Yahoo! was so famous that the creators of Google, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin, offered to acquire it in 1998. Yahoo declined the offer and multiple others but couldn’t keep pace with technology. It’s still famous and owns about 2% of the total market share.

Baidu:

Baidu is the most popular search engine in China. It was created in the 2000s and accessible only in the Chinese language. According to Alexa ranking, Baidu is the fifth most popular site despite being available in only one language.

Yandex:

Yandex is a Russian multinational corporation specializing in the tech niche. It’s also the fifth most popular search engine worldwide, and the largest, most commonly used search engine in Russia with a market share of over 52% (in Russia).

SEO Schools of thought:

SEO is a difficult and very competitive job. One that requires continuous improvements alongside Google’s algorithms updates. We can fir any SEO analysts into one of the three SEO schools of thought.

1. Black hat SEO:

Black hat SEO analysts focus on short-term achievements instead of long-term stability. They use underhand methods to rank higher in the search results and prefer quantity over quality. These sites usually start ranking higher faster than others but tend to lose that position just as fast.

Google is continuously improving its algorithms to provide better and more useful results. If they suspect foul play from someone, then that website is penalized. Google penalty means either,

• Your website is no longer listed in the Google search results.
• There’s been a dramatic drop in your website’s ranking.

2. Grey hat SEO:

We often have trouble placing grey hats. These SEO analysts use a combination of legitimate SEO practices and under the table, methods to rank high in search results.

They use techniques like PBN (Private Blog Network) to get traffic to your website. It uses a network of backlinks to drive traffic to and from a few specific websites.

3. White hat SEO:

White hat SEO is the exact opposite of black hat SEO. It refers to the practices that improve your site’s visibility without going against a search engine’s terms of services.

White hat analysts play by the rules and improve rankings by applying all principles from SEO's key areas. They deliver the best content, have a well-structured mobile-friendly website, and adhere to SEO best practices.

Key Areas of SEO:

SEO is a broad area of expertise. An SEO analyst works on the code of the website, content, keywords, and much more. The three key areas of SEO are,

1. On-page SEO:

On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing keywords, content, and metadata of the web page to rank higher in organic search results. It includes the comprehensive use of the well-placed keywords and an optimized meta tag.

2. Technical SEO:

The technical aspect of SEO is related to the structure and code segment of the website. A well-structured website is easy to navigate for both humans and web crawlers, and it ranks higher in search results.

3: Off-page SEO:

Off-page SEO refers to the aspects of web pages that are not directly related to the content or structure.

It deals with the PR (Public Relations) aspects of a website. How it’s marketed on other platforms like social media, how many inbound links it has, and more.

Top 8 Ranking factors:

No one knows exactly how Google ranking works. Experts speculate and try to deliver the best content to the user. Google provides Webmasters with information about some best practices. But the overall working of Google algorithms is unknown to the public. Small factors, like using relevant keywords, metadata, and the website's structure, help rank your websites higher in the search engine results.

1. Optimized content:

Content is one of the most important ranking factors. Google’s algorithm relies on keywords to show relevant content to the user. Content on a page must be useful and unique. Individual parts of the page should relate to each other and the overall subject.

2. Secure Websites:

HTTP (Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol Secure) provides a secure and reliable communication channel to protect their data integrity over the internet. Google encourages website owners to secure their websites with HTTPs instead of HTTP regardless of the website's content.

3. Well-structured website:

The structure of your website is a significant factor in Google SEO. A website that is easy to navigate for a human is also easy to analyze for the crawler. A website with a good structure is much likely to be higher in search results.

4. Mobile-friendly websites:

Most people prefer to use mobile phones over desktop computers. Considering that factor, Google introduced the Mobilegeddon update to urge website owners to make mobile-friendly websites to rank in mobile search results. A mobile-friendly website ranks higher in searches conducted on a mobile device.

5. Page speed:

While conducting a web search, we want to find the answers fast!

If a website takes a long time to load, then there’s a high probability that users will abandon the website and move on to the next one in line. This makes page speed a critical factor in SEO.

Probability of bounce with the increase in loading time of a web page.

(Image source: ThinkWithGoogle)

6. Links:

The World Wide Web (WWW) is based on links. Including relevant links in your web page increases its probability of ranking higher. A high number of inbound links increase your website's authority and prove its relevance to the user.

7. Domain age, history, and authority:

The average age of a web page in Google’s Top 10 results.

(Image source: ahrefs)

According to ahrefs, only 5.7% of all newly published pages get a place in the top 10 search results. It takes new websites to take a few years to gain the first place in Google search results.

8. Fresh and unique content:

Google promises up to date, relevant, and fast information retrieval to its user. Having copied or duplicate content on your website is a negative factor in Google’s SEO. If you have similar content on different pages, then use canonical URLs to address the issue accordingly.

In conclusion!

SEO is the game of 'hide and seek' between search engines and webmasters. Google implements new ways to improve and invites SEO analysts to improve alongside.

It’s fun, complex, and highly competitive. Having a place in the top search result means you’re good for a few years as it generates the most traffic. 75% of people never make it past the first page of search results. It will never get boring.