What is SEO? A brief introduction
When you use Google (or any other search engine) to search for a term, have you ever wondered how websites got there on the first page of search results, when there are probably thousands of other competing websites that match? with your search term? Well, the answer to that question is search engine optimization (SEO). Those early websites had better SEO than their competitors. So what is SEO? Simply put, it is a marketing strategy used to increase a website’s search engine ranking.
Some of those websites (such as Wikipedia, Facebook, and Microsoft) made it to the first page of search results without much help from SEO because their brands are famous enough to appear on the first page. The other websites rely on SEO to get to the first or second page of search results. You may be wondering why SEO is so important. Well, users rarely go beyond the first few pages of search results when searching for a term. When was the last time you clicked on the fifteenth page of search results?
SEO can be done in many ways. The main (and effective) SEO methods are the following:
1) SEO Titles, Headings and URLs
2) back linking
3) Write SEO content
4) The use of multimedia
5) Regular updates
This article will briefly touch on each of these SEO techniques. Each of these techniques will be described in detail in later articles.
SEO titles, headers and URLs
The title of a web page is different from its header. The title is displayed on the ‘tab’ of that web page, while the header is displayed on the web page itself. When you enter a search term (known as a keyword), the search engine tries to find websites whose title, header, and URL address match the given keyword. If a website’s title, header, or URL matches your keyword, that website ranks higher than others. For example, if the keyword you entered is “phoenix”, a website with the URL: “http://www.phoenix.com” will rank higher than a website with the URL: ” http://www.mystical_birds.com”.
back linking
When you visit a website, you will generally see various hyperlinks that link that website to other websites. These links are known as back-links. Wikipedia is a good example of back-links. All the referring websites are listed at the bottom of a Wikipedia article. These hyperlinks (at the bottom of an article) are backlinks from the respective referring websites. Backlinks help increase the ranking of a website. In general, the more backlinks a website has, the higher its ranking will be.
SEO content writing
Search engines try to match the keyword entered with the content of websites. For example, if your keyword is “golfer”, the search engine will search for articles that contain the term “golfer”. However, there will be millions of articles containing the term “golfer”. The search engine will rank these articles based on the “keyword density” of the articles. Keyword density is calculated by dividing the number of keywords in the article by the total number of words and then multiplying the result by 100.
For example, if a hundred word article has the keyword “golfer” repeated twice, the article has a keyword density of 2%. Articles that have a keyword density of 0.5-2% generally receive the highest ranking.
the use of multimedia
Everyone prefers graphical websites as compared to plain text websites. The major search engines know this and therefore; They give websites that contain multimedia (graphics, videos, and flash applications) a higher ranking than other websites.
regular updates
People have an insatiable thirst for new information and facts. Major search engines address this need by giving websites that are regularly updated a higher ranking than other websites.
We hope we have answered your question “What is SEO?” satisfactorily through this article.