Do you own an e-commerce store? Run a blog? Or offer freelance services via your website? Well, in any case, you’d want traffic and people visiting your website. Without it, your website may just be dead.

However, the real question is that with thousands or maybe even millions of search results on every query, how can you make people visit your website and make it more visible to them?

To answer this, I believe Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the best way to get noticed on Google, as it can help rank your website in the top results on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

Below, I will explain everything about SEO. So, if you’re running a website and want people to visit it or improve its rank in the SERP, keep on reading.

What is SEO and How Does it Work?

Search Engine Optimization is an organic way to grow your website and improve its ranking on SERP. Since SEO is organic in nature, it may take a few months to generate effective results.

However, the results may also depend on the SEO strategy you use for the website. That said, it can ensure a constant flow of organic traffic to your website for a long period.

Also, unlike paid ads, SEO is more cost-effective and ideal for companies that don’t have the budget for paid advertisements.

Why is SEO Mostly Google-focused?

Among the top search engines such as Bing, Yahoo, and more, Google is the most visited search engine, with 78.83% of search engine users on desktop. Besides this significant market share, the following factors also explain why SEO is mostly focused on Google:

• Advanced Algorithms: Google’s algorithms are more sophisticated than most search engines and offer more accurate results.
• Tools and Resources: Unlike other search engines, Google offers better tools and resources, such as Google Keyword Planner, Google Search Console, and more, which makes SEO more effective.

Types of Search Engine Optimization

There are three types of SEO, and their goal is to improve the website’s ranking and visibility in SERP. These include:

• Off-Page SEO
• On-Page SEO
• Technical SEO

Off-Page SEO

This includes several off-the-website activities to help improve your website’s rankings. The following measures may help in off-page SEO.

• Create Quality Backlinks: You should aim to create quality backlinks on high-authority websites through guest posting. Backlinks can be useful in redirecting online users to your website.
• Post Engaging Content: Engaging content such as infographics may help improve your website’s ranking on the SERP.
• Be Active on Social Media Forums: Actively participating on social media forums and communities such as Reddit, and naturally promoting your business is another way to improve your website’s ranking on Google’s Search Engine Results Page.

On-Page SEO

Unlike off-page, on-page SEO is done on the website itself. For on-page optimization, the following measures may help:

• High-Quality Content: Posting high-quality content such as blogs, resources, infographics, etc., on your website may improve its rankings.
• Target High-Volume Keywords: Using high-volume keywords and optimizing them in your content pieces may help improve your website’s ranking.
• Meta-Tags Optimization: Crafting compelling and descriptive meta tags along with helpful content structure and optimized headings (H1, H2, H3, and so on) may help in on-page SEO.

Technical SEO:

In technical SEO, the goal is to bring technical improvements to your website’s structure rather than focusing on content optimization. Here are some ways to perform technical SEO on your website:

• Site-Speed Optimization: Here, the objective is to improve the website’s overall speed to keep the bounce rate at a minimum.
• Website Structure: Ideally, your website should have a clear and logical structure, along with effective internal linking to guide users and search engines.
• Data Structure: This includes the schema markups, which provide essential information about your website’s content.

4 Key Elements in Search Engine Optimization

According to Backlinko, Google uses over 200 SEO ranking factors. While it may be a difficult task to optimize your website for every SEO ranking factor, here are some of the major ones to watch out for:

Crawlability and Indexability

A non-indexed website may not be visible in the Google SERP. To ensure that your website is shown on the SERP, you need to index it first. However, it’s your choice to index or non-index all or some pages of your website.

That said, Google bots crawl every webpage and website, irrespective of their indexed or non-indexed nature.

High-Quality Content

The quality of content on your websites, such as resources, blogs, web copies, etc., contributes a lot to its position in the SERP. Over the years, Google has de-ranked websites that produced low-quality content that did not fulfill the customer intent.

You should use the following practices to ensure quality content:

• Refrain from adding unnecessary fluff to your content piece.
• Content pieces with little substance may never get ranked on the first few search pages.
• Avoid AI-written content and prefer publishing human-written content.
• Keyword stuffing may be considered a manipulative strategy by Google and can affect your website’s ranking on the SERP.

E-E-A-T

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness. These four factors are quite important as Google may determine the quality of a content piece through them.

Here’s a brief explanation of these factors:

• Experience: This indicates that the author should have first-hand experience with the topic they are working on.
• Expertise: This indicates that the author of a content piece should have expertise on the topic they’re writing on.
• Authoritativeness: This refers to the authority your website has in the respective domain.
• Trustworthiness: This reflects the right and accurate information provided on your website.

High-Quality Backlinks

As I mentioned above, backlinking is conducted in off-page SEO and is quite useful for growing your website. One of the most effective ways to create backlinks is by guest posting. Through this, you can hyperlink your website to a keyword in a content piece and publish it on a high-quality website.

Great Tools to Use for SEO

In SEO, it’s vital to watch out for website metrics, such as engagement, impressions, clicks, and more, as they contribute significantly to a website’s rankings. Besides these factors, you may also need to conduct keyword research to find high-volume keywords and add them to your content pieces.

In short, optimizing your website can be a complex and tedious task unless you use SEO tools to your advantage. Some of them include:

• Yoast SEO – Content generation and optimization.
• SEMrush – Analyzing a website’s traffic analytics.
• Ahrefs – Site-wide audit for technical SEO.
• Screaming Frog – Creating or revamping a website’s structure.
• AnswerThePublic – Content researching and learning about different trends.

Here, note that these SEO tools are bandwidth-heavy, as they fetch large data sets and generate results in real time. To use these tools for efficient work, you should be equipped with a reliable internet connection.

Not long ago, a few of my SEO tools started taking considerable time to generate results. However, I subscribed to high-speed Spectrum Internet, and now I can easily perform website audits or conduct keyword research without worrying about the slow connection.

Is Search Engine Optimization Dying?

Before winding up, I thought it might be a great idea to discuss this question, as I’ve seen numerous people talking about it on the internet.

Last year, Google Search’s Core Updates hit Forbes, a reputable website, and introduced AI overviews that shook the SERP rankings. That said, I believe SEO will not die, not until every business opts for paid ads. However, SEO will keep evolving with time, as it has always evolved.

More importantly, Google’s Core Updates will play a major role in determining SEO practices in the future.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How can I find relevant keywords?

SEMrush or Ahrefs can be used to find relevant keywords for your content pieces. You can also research competitors to find keywords you should target.

How can I find technical SEO errors?

Screaming Frog or Ahrefs are some of the best SEO tools for finding technical errors on your website. Google PageSpeed Insights is a great tool to find issues like mobile optimization problems, slow loading and broken links.

How long does it take to be successful in SEO?

Usually, it may take a few months to rank your website on different keywords. However, depending on your SEO strategy, this period can increase or decrease as well.