What is Search Engine Optimization(SEO)

Hey friends! John here, Digital Marketing guru and founder of Digital Badi. Today I want to talk about an important topic that can make or break your online business – search engine optimization, or SEO for short.

What is Search engine optimization: the process of making your site better for search engines. Also the job title of a person who does this for a living: We just hired a new SEO to improve our presence on the web.

You’ve probably heard the term SEO thrown around before, but what exactly does it mean? And why should you care about it if you have a website or blog? Well, stick with me over the next few minutes and I’ll explain everything in simple terms!

A Quick SEO Definition

SEO is the process of optimizing your website and content so it ranks higher and appears more frequently in search engine results. The higher up your website appears for keywords and phrases related to your business, the more likely you are to be found by potential customers and drive traffic to your site.

So in simple terms, SEO helps get your website found easier on Google, Bing, or whatever search engine people use to find your products or services.

Why SEO Matters to Your Business

Now you might be wondering why SEO is such a big deal. Can’t people just find my website if they type in the URL or click on an ad?

Well, the reality is most people don’t search that way anymore. In fact, studies show that close to 90% of online experiences begin with a search engine like Google.

When someone wants to find a business, service, or product online, they start by searching related keywords on Google. If your website doesn’t come up on that critical first page of results, you may be missing out on tons of potential customers.

Think about the last time you searched for something online. Did you click beyond the first page or two of results? Most people don’t. So SEO helps make sure your business is visible and accessible to people who are actively looking for what you offer.

It’s all about visibility and discoverability. SEO allows search engines to better understand your website and rank it accordingly so the right people can find you.

How Search Engines Evaluate and Rank Websites

Now that you know why SEO is critical, let’s talk about how it actually works. How do search engines decide which websites should rank first, second, third and so on for a given search?

While search engine algorithms are complicated (and top secret!), we do know some basic factors that influence rankings:

• Page content – Pages with relevant, useful, well-written content tend to rank higher. Search engines want to point users to authoritative sources that directly answer their query.
• Keywords – Using relevant keywords related to your business naturally throughout your pages helps search engines understand your content focus.
• Backlinks – Quality sites linking back to your pages with anchor text helps send “votes” that your content is worthwhile.
• Site optimization – Technical aspects like site speed, mobile optimization, proper HTML tags and site architecture help search bots crawl and index your site.
• User engagement – Metrics like bounce rate, time on site and others indicate whether real humans find your pages helpful. Greater engagement improves rankings.

There are over 200 total ranking factors, but no need to get overwhelmed! Focus on creating high quality content, user experience, and basic technical SEO and you’ll be off to a great start.

Core SEO Strategies to Boost Your Rankings

Now let’s get into some actionable tips and strategies to optimize your site for higher rankings and visibility. While SEO can get complicated fast, I’m going to focus on three key areas that typically give the best return on time and effort:

1. Target Important Keywords

The first step is researching and selecting relevant target keywords and phrases for your business to optimize around. These should be terms and questions your ideal customers are searching that relate directly to your products, services and content focus.

Some best practices here:

• Brainstorm a list of keyword ideas and search volume using Google’s keyword planner. Look for high traffic searches with medium/low competition.
• Prioritize keywords that relate to purchasing intent like “buy X”, “X reviews”, “[city] X service”.
• Include long tail variations like “how to use X”, “X benefits”, etc.
• Use keyword research tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs or Moz for advanced analysis.
• Track keywords driving existing traffic and conversions in Google Analytics.

Focus your SEO efforts on 5-20 primary keywords, while also optimizing for dozens of secondary long tails. Adding keyword targeting improves discoverability.

2. Create Awesome Content

The next step is creating remarkable website content optimized for your target keywords. Compelling content builds trust, improves conversions and also ranks well in search.

Some tips for keyword-focused content creation:

• Write long form, in-depth articles targeting primary keywords – aim for 2000+ words of helpful info.
• Include related keywords naturally throughout content, but don’t over-optimize. Strive for 1-3% keyword density.
• Create tons of useful content – blog posts, guides, videos, tools – optimized around secondary long tail keyphrases.
• Focus on readability – use headings, lists, images and white space for scannability.
• Answer common questions, objections and searches your audience has around keywords.
• Embed keywords in key places like titles, URLs, image names and opening paragraphs.

Awesome content that really speaks to your audience and directly addresses their interests around your keywords is a huge SEO win.

3. Build Authoritative Backlinks

The final piece of the puzzle is acquiring credible external sites linking back to your content with contextually relevant anchor text. This helps search engines validate your expertise and shows you offer valuable info worth linking to.

Some backlink building tips:

• Create resources like blogs, guides, tools and datasets that other sites would naturally link to.
• Reach out to industry websites and blogs to see if they’ll link to your content if it’s useful to their audience.
• Promote your best content on social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook Groups and Twitter to drive engagement.
• Guest post on reputable sites in your industry – offer value to their audience while including a relevant backlink.
• Focus on getting editorial links – natural mentions from other sites. Avoid low quality networks.
• Link internally between important pages and content on your own site.

Backlinks remain one of the strongest ranking factors. So build them steadily over time to improve authority and rankings.

Tracking SEO Performance with Key Metrics

Once you implement your core SEO strategy, you’ll want to track how your efforts impact performance. Use these key metrics to measure your progress:

• Rank Tracking – Monitor rankings in Google for your target keywords. Are you moving up in rankings over time?
• Organic Traffic – Analyze Google Analytics to see if organic search traffic is increasing. More keywords ranking higher = more SEO traffic.
• Conversions – Watch goals like email subscribers, downloads and purchases from organic search. More SEO traffic should drive more conversions.
• Click Through Rate – Click through rate (CTR) measures how enticing your snippets are in search results. Higher CTRs tend to improve rankings.
• Page Authority – Page authority metrics like Moz’s DA score or Ahref’s URL Rating show if your overall authority is growing.

SEO is an ongoing process. Continuously optimize pages and monitor analytics to see the impact over time.

The Never-Ending Journey of SEO Success

Phew, that was quite an info dump on all things SEO! The important thing to remember is that SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. It takes consistent work over an extended time to see big results.

But the long term payoff is worth it. By showing up prominently when people search for your products, services and keywords, you can:

• Reach way more of your target customers
• Drive higher quality visitors ready to take action
• Continuously grow awareness and visibility
• Deliver a better return on investment than paid ads

So be patient, stick with it, and keep optimizing! Focus on creating remarkable content, improving technical site factors, and building authoritative backlinks over time.

SEO has the potential to transform your online business and be a key driver behind your success. Hopefully this post provided a helpful overview of what SEO is, how it works, key optimization strategies, and metrics to track.

If you have any other questions feel free to reach out! I’m always happy to chat more about the wonderful world of SEO.

Now get out there and start improving your site’s rankings and visibility today! The opportunities are endless with great SEO.

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Digital John

John is a Digital Marketing Trainer and Blogger and YouTube creator with 5+ years work experience in digital marketing field. He is the founder of Digital Badi.