What is SEO? Learn the Basics of Search Engine Optimization

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As a business owner, you must know what is SEO marketing and how it works. Whether you have been in business for a long or are just a new website owner, every person who wants to take their business to the next level locally or globally should know about Search Engine Optimization.

As a digital marketing expert, I have worked globally for many companies and clients and helped them achieve their business visibility and rankings. It is true that not every person is familiar with SEO techniques and due to that they are lacking in their business. Search Engine Optimization is very crucial for every business whether it is a small business or a large enterprise.

Let’s get to know exactly what you can get with the help of an SEO professional. Also, know how to make a B2B SEO campaign for your business.

What is SEO? Understand the Basics of SEO

This is the first question in every business owner’s mind what does seo mean? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It means optimizing a website using white hat SEO techniques for the long run by following Google’s guidelines. Optimization includes On-page SEO, Off-page SEO, technical SEO, content creation, and the algorithms of search engines.

The next question in the business owner’s mind is Why SEO is important? It is important because you want to get more profit in your business, Isn’t it? Yes, you want it.

SEO helps businesses get more leads organically, it helps to boost a website’s visibility on major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, Baidu, etc. Higher rankings are very important as if you are not on the top, you can not get profit and potential for conversions.

What are the SEO Elements you Need to Know about them?

The major things that come under SEO elements are –

OnPage SEO-

Do you know what is On-Page SEO? A business owner or the SEO professional needs to optimize the client’s or company’s website using Title tags, descriptions, images, alt tags, headings, keywords, content quality, etc. These things make a website relevant for the search query you want to rank.

Off-Page SEO

Once your On-Page stuff is done, you can start the off-page SEO. It includes building high-quality backlinks from high-authority websites, social signals, and external mentions. These can be done through press releases, blog posting, Guest posts, etc. A strong backlinks strategy can give your webpage more weight and help in rankings.

Technical SEO

It plays one of the major roles in increasing a website’s rankings, popularity, and health score. A more User-friendly website gets more attention from search engines. You need to make sure that your website is mobile-friendly and easily accessible by users and crawlers. This includes core web vitals, mobile optimization, XML sitemaps, and structured data (schema markup).

How Search Engines Work?

Each search engine has its crawler. Which comes to the website regularly to check whether there is any update or not. It checks the website’s index of the pages in the database and makes it visible whenever someone searches a query that is relevant to that page.

In simple words, the Crawler checks the new content indexes it on the database, and makes a copy of the cache. Search engine ranks a webpage based on relevance, quality, backlinks, and user experience.

Search Algorithms also play a crucial role as if we talk about the largest search engine Google then it comes with time to time new updates to refine the searches for users. These updates are known as Core Web Vitals, Panda, Penguin, RankBrain, Helpful Content, EEAT, etc.

Types of SEO

There are many types of SEO such as On-Page SEO, Off-Page SEO, white-hat SEO, Black-Hat SEO, Gray-Hat SEO, Technical SEO, International SEO, Local SEO, e-commerce SEO, Content SEO, Mobile SEO, Negative SEO, YouTube SEO, Voice search SEO and ASO.

Here we will discuss a few of them.

White Hat SEO, Black Hat SEO, and Gray-Hat SEO

White Hat SEO is an ethical SEO practice to increase the website visibility and rank on search result page by following Google guidelines and search algorithms. It is the best practice for a long-term business run.

Black Hat SEO is an unethical SEO practice to get results faster. This practice does not follow Google’s guidelines and search algorithms. They use methods such as clocking, keyword stuffing, etc to manipulate search rankings. It is not a long-run business process and a website can be penalized anytime by Google.

Gray-hat SEO practice falls in between white-hat and black-hat SEO. It is less harmful than a pure black hat. This process includes low-quality content creation, buying expired domains, and redirecting other domains to your domain.

Local SEO, eCommerce SEO, and International SEO

Do you know what is local SEO? Local SEO is very helpful for businesses that want to increase website visibility locally to reach their local audience. The competition could be low due to the fewer competitors available and not everyone is targeting digital marketing and online presence. This includes creating a Google My Business page, optimizing content to target a local audience, local connections, and local business listing and backlinks, and implementing and targeting local keywords.

eCommerce SEO helps online stores to get visibility either locally or globally by targeting short-tail keywords whose intent is to purchase the product. This includes optimizing product page content with the customer intent keywords, titles, descriptions, and blogs to promote the products.

International SEO refers to the services and online store businesses that want to target an international audience. Mostly service provider business comes under this. This includes long-tail keywords, targeting all locations and languages to drive natural organic traffic. It is beneficial for multinational corporations, travel and tourism businesses, e-commerce companies, and content creators.

How to do SEO? Best Practices to Follow

SEO best practices refer to the strategies, techniques, and tactics to improve the website’s visibility and rankings on search engines. Here’s an overview of key SEO best practices:

Keyword Research and Optimization

Keyword research is a major factor for a website. To research keywords use Google Keywords Planner, Ahref, and Semrush. After that start adding them to the title, meta description, headings, URL, content body, and images to optimize the webpage for search engines and users as well as stuffing.

High-Quality Content Creation

Create valuable, informative, and engaging content to solve the user query in any form whether the user looking for service, product, or information. Content should be focused on the intent of the user. A longer in dept researched, keywords based, well structure content becomes noticeable by search engines. Content should be unique to avoid penalties.

On-Page SEO Optimization

On-page SEO should be perfect by adding keywords on the title, meta description, headings, internal linking, and URL structure. Make eye-catching content and a user-friendly page so that it can be appreciated by the user and search engine.

Mobile Optimization

After desktop, mobile is the second thing handy always to everyone. Hence, it is mandatory to make a website optimized for mobile devices. Easy navigation and indexed pages got appreciation and rank on mobile search.

Page Speed Optimization

A website should load fast on every device such as desktops, mobile, and tablets. To improve the website load time fix the issues found through Google Lighthouse and GTmetrix. Also, core web vitals are one of the crucial things for SEO. So make sure LCP, FID, and CLS are optimized.

Technical SEO

You might have heard the term but do you know what is technical SEO? Need to check the technical aspects of a website to get more visibility and indexing fast on search engines. Make sure the XML sitemap is there for better Crawlability. Use HTTPS, Schema markup, and canonical tags to let Google understand the page is unique and secure to access for users and search engines.

SEO Metrics to Track Success

To Track the SEO metrics you need to make Google Analytics or use third-party tools such as Ahref and SEmrush. Although these SEO tools don’t show the exact data and metrics you can consider them as well to see regular growth.

Some SEO metrics to check always using Google Search Console and Google Analytics are-

Organic Traffic – Always measure the organic traffic on Google Analytics of the website and webpages from the location you want to rank for. Check whether you are increasing or decreasing and take further steps accordingly.

Keyword Rankings – You can check keyword rankings on the Google search console. Check the location, impression, clicks, and rankings by adding filters such as country, date, landing pages, etc.

Bounce Rate – to check the bounce rate use Google Analytics. This metric tells how users are coming to your page and how frequently they are leaving. If you see a high bounce rate, you can add CTA and internal linking, make content healthy by adding search intent-based keywords, and make the content more informative.

Conversion Rates – To check conversion and conversion rate, visit to Google Analytics dashboard and see if you have set goals or not. First, set them up and then start tracking the responses.

Challenges of SEO

Although it looks like SEO is easy just by optimizing a website and making backlinks you can get rankings but that’s not true. You can not get it within a day or within a set timeframe. It is a long-term process and it takes a lot of time.

You can not do all the optimization in one day and it is not recommended to do it fast as it could lead to over-optimization.

So you can not build thousands of backlinks instantly and if you do it will be counted as spam and it could lead to penalization.

In the SEO process, a business owner should have patience because it is a long-run process and everything will be done slowly and you will be able to see progress gradually.

Search engines are constantly updating the algorithms so this is also a major part for SEO professionals to follow them.

Also, less competitive keywords can be seen within a few months after all these optimization but for the highly competitive industry keywords, you will have to wait and may take longer to achieve top rankings.

SEO Trends and Future

Nowadays, people are searching using voice commands instead of tying on the search bar. It is trendy and could affect the SEO. Experts are working on it and soon may come up with other solutions as well.

AI has taken all over the world from a single step to a large one. Content creation, backlinks automation, and so on. But you are a genius, aren’t you? You know that the manual is the most effective and appropriate way to do the SEO.

You can get help from AI but before implementation look at them and do the necessary actions.

Conclusion –

Hope you have the answer to the many questions such as what is SEO in digital marketing and how to do it etc. SEO is changing day by day and every person should update themself to get the advantages of SEO. Make sure you are reading the all-new algorithms updated by Google and are coming in the future.

As per my experience, I have delivered the most I could do here. Still, you can connect with me for any suggestions.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s)

1. Does Podcast Image Help with SEO?

Yes, it can help you to reach your audience and drive them to listen to your podcast.

2. How do SEO and Content Marketing Work Together?

SEO and content work together as both need the help of each expert to make website content, blog content, article, and guest article content healthy with wisely chosen keywords implementation along with user intent.

3. Should H1 be a Blog Title for SEO?

You can make the same title and different title this is all up to you. The title should be unique and optimized for the both search engine and the user.

4. Can a Video Podcast Help SEO?

Yes, it can help. You can mention the name of the website on your podcast and the listener can visit to see it, that way it can help your website’s SEO.

5. Does Chatgpt Generated Text Hurt Your SEO?

If you are just doing copy-paste then yes, it is going to hurt your website. If you are just taking help and making your own unique content then it will not hurt.

I am a young digital marketer and a blog analyst, Author from Uttarakhand, India. I have been into blogging since 2013 and helping businesses with their SEO requirements. I have 12 years of experience; during the journey, I have worked on many websites and made good friends. I research and share my knowledge with everyone to help them succeed as solopreneurs, businessmen, and entrepreneurs. You can also find me on LinkedIn and see my entire journey.