What is Search Engine Optimization and Why is it Important?

Search engine optimization is a process that focuses on influencing the visibility of a website in a search engine’s organic search results. There are many practices that follow these principles and their ultimate aim is to obtain a high ranking in the search engine results page. It can be beneficial for businesses of all sizes and types, organizations, and individuals.

All SEO activities must be driven by and large by keywords and keyword phrases, and other key-phrases relevant to the content for which you are optimizing.

The ultimate goal of any SEO campaign? To rank as organically as possible for your targeted keywords within your market segment.

The starting point for SEO is to assess the current ranking and visibility of a website in order to identify opportunities for improvement.

Five Basic Steps for a Successful SEO Strategy in 2021

1. On-Page SEO Optimization Basics

The on-page SEO optimization checklist is a set of guidelines that can help you to ensure that your website is optimized for search engine crawlers. Some of the most important things to make sure are covered are:

  • title tags
  • meta descriptions,
  • headings and subheadings
  • optimised images
  • page content

2. SEO Off-Page Optimization

Off-page SEO has the potential to be the most effective and affordable SEO strategy of all. It focuses on building relationships and earning links.

Some of the most common off-page SEO tasks include:

  • Finding link opportunities: These can be any online resource where you can get a link, including forums, guest posts, directories, article directories, social media groups, etc.
  • Building relationships with bloggers: We all know how much authority these sites have in Google’s eyes. So it’s no wonder that many bloggers are willing to link back to your site when you provide them with helpful content in return.
  • Outreach Link Building: Outreach is a relationship between two sites where one site will contact the other site to have someone share their content on that other site, or to create a link from that other site back to the first. In return, the first site will contact a few of their friends and ask them to share the content from the second site with their readers.

3. Mobile-friendly website for SEO

Websites are no longer limited to desktop computers. The market share of mobile users is constantly growing, and websites that are not optimized for mobile devices are missing out on a major chunk of the population.

The need for a Mobile-friendly website is becoming more important with the rise in Smartphone use. Google also announced that it would be ranking sites higher that are mobile-friendly.

Mobile technology has changed the way we live and work and as such, it’s important to have a website that your customers can access on whichever device they choose to use: desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone.

4. Content Optimization for SEO

Content optimization is the process of creating content with a purpose. The purpose is to help search engine crawlers to index your pages and rank them better. In this section, we will mention some dos and don’ts for content optimization as well as some examples of successful SEO campaigns.

Do:

  • Ensure that you have a good title for your page
  • Create a meta description
  • Include keywords to rank higher in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages)
  • Use images on your page
  • Add tags to your page for relevancy to search queries

Don’t:

  • Make sure your content is long or short enough, 800-1,500 words should be the sweet spot. As a rule of thumb, you want to make sure potential visitors can get the information they need without scrolling too much and still wanting to read more.

5. Social media marketing for SEO

Social media is the new frontier for marketing. It is where your customers are, and where they are spending their time. If you want to reach them, you need to be there too!

Social media is a powerful tool that can help you rank higher in search engines. It can also help your brand awareness go viral. However, it takes work and effort to get there!

Conclusion

Using the various Search engine optimization techniques you will be able to get your website ranked high in the search results for your keywords. This will bring organic traffic to your website and increase in sales and revenue. SEO is an ongoing process to keep your website ranked high in the search results.