In business and marketing, SEO is the practice of improving your online visibility in organic search results to increase the quantity and quality of your website traffic. Overall, this digital marketing strategy aims to generate revenue and growth for your company through increased online visibility.SEO is a fundamental part of digital marketing because people conduct trillions of searches every year, often with commercial intent to find information about products and services. Search is often the primary source of digital traffic for brands and complements other marketing channels. Greater visibility and ranking higher in search results than your competition can have a material impact on your bottom line.Maybe you’ve heard that SEO can help drive traffic to your website and get you higher rankings, but you aren’t really sure how it works or what areas to focus on? Well, you’ve come to the right place. Read on to find out what every digital marketer should know about SEO.

What is SEO in Marketing?What are the 4 Types of SEO?What is SEO in Simple Terms?How can I Learn SEO Best Practices?What are Examples of SEO Marketing?What is the Purpose of SEO?What are SEO Principles?What are the Two Techniques of SEO?What are SEO Tools?How can I do SEO for my Website?

What is SEO in Marketing?

SEO stands for “search engine optimization,” but to fully answer your question, the simple meaning of SEO in marketing your business is the process of improving your website so that search engines like Google are more likely to show your business in users’ search results.Website SEO involves technical optimization, as well as researching keywords, implementing those keywords into your site, and continuously improving your content to make it easier for people to find. If that still sounds complicated, that’s okay. There’s an easier way to manage your own business SEO efforts.Search engines such as Google and Bing use bots to crawl pages on the web, going from site to site, collecting information about those pages and putting them in an index. Think of the index like a giant library where a librarian can pull up a book (or a web page) to help you find exactly what you’re looking for at the time.Next, algorithms analyze pages in the index, taking into account hundreds of ranking factors or signals, to determine the order pages should appear in the search results for a given query. In our library analogy, the librarian has read every single book in the library and can tell you exactly which one will have the answers to your questions.Unlike paid search ads, you can’t pay search engines to get higher organic search rankings, which means SEO experts have to put in the work.The search algorithms are designed to surface relevant, authoritative pages and provide users with an efficient search experience. Optimizing your site and content with these factors in mind can help your pages rank higher in the search results.What are the 4 Types of SEO?SEO is one of the most effective digital marketing tactics you can invest your time into, and there are a variety of ways you can take advantage of the practice.Here are four key types of SEO that you can get started on.1. On-Page SEOOn-page SEO, also sometimes referred to as on-site SEO, is the process of optimizing the content on your website. This can include your body copy, keywords, headers, meta titles, meta descriptions, images, and more.Some tips for on-page SEO include:

Research your keywords – Determine the terms and phrases that you want to rank for on search engines. Do some keyword research on which terms have high relevance and search volume, but also consider choosing terms with less competition. Once you’ve determined the right keywords, be sure you let your writing team know to optimize the page content to include them as they write.Optimize metadata – Metadata tells Google, and searchers, about the content of a page. Make sure your meta titles and meta descriptions include relevant content and your keyword phrases so you have a better chance of ranking higher. It’s important to note that Google also sometimes rewrites our metadata with other copy on the page, which makes it important to ensure your whole page is optimized.Perform internal linking – Internal links are URLs that link to other pages on your website. Often, you will attach these to anchored text. Insert links on targeted keywords in your copy and link to high-authority pages to better help Google read your site, and to make it more user-friendly.

Incorporating on-page SEO into your marketing efforts is helpful for search engines to understand the content on your site. And once Google understands your website, it can reward you by displaying your site for search queries it deems relevant.2. Off-Page SEOOff-page SEO is pretty much everything that does not happen on your website. Off-page SEO is all about creating exposure and trust for your company, which ultimately can result in more visitors and sales.Most off-page SEO work is focused on link building. If you’re unaware, link building is the practice of getting other reputable websites to link back to your site.Some quality link-building tactics include:

Pitching articles – There are many blogs and online publications that will accept and publish posts you pitch to them. Make sure the site is relevant to your work and you are able to link back to your company in some way. For example, manufacturers should target relevant publications in their niche to reach their target audience. Also, make sure that you do not accept or exchange money in order to do so as it is against Google’s guidelines.Competitor research – Check out the backlink profile of your largest competitors. Find out where they are acquiring links and which sites will allow a hyperlink. Helping reporters – There are a variety of online services, such as HARO, where journalists request insights from certain industry experts. This is where you come in! Offer up a quote or information on your area of expertise and they will most likely link back to your website in the article.

Make sure that your acquired links are earned, come from authoritative sources, bring qualified traffic, are “follow” links, and are from relevant sites!3. Technical SEOTechnical SEO refers to the actions performed to help search engines crawl your website and enhance user experience (UX). As search engines and their algorithms become more complex, these requirements change which means that this type of SEO is always evolving.In order to make sure there are not any problems with crawlability and UX, your technical SEO efforts must be efficient.Technical SEO efforts to be addressed should include:

Website speed – A faster website speed is always better, and recently, Google has further included a variety of load time variables to be ranking factors. Be sure to make your template simple, limit redirects, and optimize your visuals.Mobile friendliness – Many users are moving from desktop to mobile to perform an array of searches for products and services. Check your site on a mobile device to ensure that it’s easy to navigate for any visitors coming via mobile.Site structure – Use the HTTPS hypertext, a user-friendly and consistent URL structure, a clean navigation hierarchy, and consistent internal links to help make your site structure concise.

4. Local SEOLocal SEO is a variation of SEO that focuses on a specific area, rather than a national focus. It’s all about increasing your online presence in your community and promoting your products or services to local customers.Often, how well you rank on Google depends on your Google My Business profile. This is where you include your address, business hours, description, reviews, and photos. The search engine results pages will look at proximity, relevance, and prominence based on the user’s search query, and select your business if you meet various requirements.The benefits of local SEO include:

It’s highly targetedIt’s freeThere is a greater opportunity to rank locally since only 44% of businesses claim their GMB listing

Some ways you can improve your local SEO include writing tailored local landing pages, optimizing your local profiles, submitting spam on Google Maps, building local links, and more.What is SEO in Simple Terms?SEO stands for search engine optimization, which is a set of practices designed to improve the appearance and positioning of web pages in organic search results. Because organic search is the most prominent way for people to discover and access online content, a good SEO strategy is essential for improving the quality and quantity of traffic to your website.How can I Learn SEO Best Practices?While search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t a cut-and-dried topic, starting doesn’t have to be daunting or expensive. In fact, you can enter your URL here to learn which areas to focus on first, based on your site’s SEO.Everyone starts somewhere before they’re considered a pro — all you need is easy-to-follow steps to traverse the standards of Google, Yahoo, and Bing.1. Understand the goal of SEOBusinesses have different marketing goals, but every company shares the desire to boost revenue — and that’s the general purpose of SEO. Improving your site with SEO allows you to rank at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs), sparking revenue-inducing traffic.Before that completely sinks in, you have to grasp the inner workings of search engines.Google and other leading search engines have “spiders” or “bots” that crawl the Internet to find, index, and rank sites. When someone enters a search, search engines deliver a list of websites with relevant content.Search engines need to find your site, so that should be your first order of business. You can ask Google to index your URL with their URL Inspection Tool and Bing via their Bing Webmaster Tools.2. Master keyword researchIt takes research to pick the words you want to rank for — aka keywords. If you select keywords that people frequently search and that fit your business, you can get your site in front of a bigger audience.There are two kinds of keywords — long-tail keywords that span three or more words and short-tail keywords that hold only one or two words. Long-tail keywords focus your pages and generate better interest.For example, if someone searches “where to buy magazines,” it’s more precise than “magazines,” so you can appeal to their expectations better.So, how do you know the top searches that relate to your industry?You use keyword tools like Keywords Everywhere, Soolve, and KeywordsFX as you learn SEO. You can also glimpse at the keywords your competitors use for a little healthy SEO competition.Keywords are central elements for SEO because you’ll weave them into your content, titles, meta descriptions, and URLs. Getting familiar with keyword research is a foundational step in your SEO journey.3. Know the difference between on-page and off-page SEOSEO happens in two places — on-page and off-page. What takes place on-page is what you can directly change when you learn SEO, while what takes place off-page is up to other sites. It’s not surprising that on-page SEO is an easier topic to cover and understand. You manage multiple parts of your pages to please visitors and search engine bots.On-page SEO involves formatting (like H1 and H2 tags), keyword usage, navigation, URLs, meta descriptions, and image descriptions or alt text. But it goes far beyond this handful of factors, too, which takes a lot of careful work.For off-page SEO, you have to rely on others’ opinions of your online content. Authoritative links to your site, mentions about your brand, and social media marketing all contribute to your off-page presence.4. Learn to identify UX signalsSearch engines aim to satisfy people with the right results, so user experience (UX) plays a substantial role in SEO. Modifications to your site should prioritize users, making the design, functionality, and material fulfill their expectations.Algorithms like Google’s RankBrain analyze user behavior to measure their level of satisfaction and preferences. Through machine learning, there’s now a closer look at the patterned practices of users.The percentage of searchers who click on a search engine result, or the organic click-through rate (CTR), is one area of user experience that Google checks.It helps to show the relevance and attractiveness of a result compared to others.Another UX signal, dwell time, which is how long someone stays on a page before returning to the SERP, is also recognized by search engines, and it can influence your SEO performance.Depending on the type of search query, a longer dwell time can demonstrate their interest in your result or show that they have trouble finding a clear answer. The keyword and material can indicate which response is more accurate.These metrics reflect the condition of your SEO as you make tweaks and seek to optimize. Pay attention to UX signals during your SEO education to elevate your rankings.5. Embrace SEO-friendly content creationThe content that you craft for your site — including blogs, informational articles, news releases, and videos — is the prime method for you to charm searchers and search engines. Skillful content creation can draw in traffic from Google if you follow SEO best practices.Written content is convenient for search engine crawlers because they’re proficient in sifting through text. They’re looking for a balance of keywords, comprehensive information, and a digestible layout. It’s essential to learn that SEO-friendly content correlates with length.Longer posts, for example, have a better chance of assisting searchers in their hunt for knowledge or products. Content needs to address the chosen topic thoroughly, and Google looks for polished articles rather than sloppy, churned-out posts.Search engines also require fresh, original content and penalize results that only duplicate or copy words from other sites. During the process to learn SEO, beware of these penalties.6. Start link buildingIn the collection of 200+ ranking factors for Google, links remain one of the top three. Links from other websites to your pages indicate to search engines how trusted and useful your site is to users across the web.However, search engines can be extremely strict when it comes to questionable link-building tactics. White-hat link building means you’re earning the admiration of other industry authorities, trusted reviewers, and the public.You can construct a beneficial reputation by strengthening your network and boosting brand awareness. Natural links can also come from guest blogging and requesting links to existing mentions.Engaging in social media is an effective way to encourage people to read, share, and talk about your site. This proactive approach often leads to link building when customers discuss your business with others.What are Examples of SEO Marketing?Having some examples of SEO can help you see what various tactics look like in practice. To that end, here are five of the best SEO examples to inspire your own online marketing!1. Long-tail keyword integrationKeywords are one of the most essential components of SEO. By incorporating keywords into your written web content, you can communicate to Google which searches your content is most relevant to, helping it rank for them.Specifically, you should aim for long-tail keywords — that is, those that are several words long. Longer keywords tend to be more specific, meaning you can reach a more relevant audience and face less competition from other businesses.Aireserv provides a great example of this in their content.  In one of their blog posts on cleaning air purifiers, they didn’t simply target a short keyword like “air filter” — they went after the long-tail keyword “how to clean an air purifier,” which they included in both the title and subheading of the piece.

As a result, their article holds the top spot in Google rankings for that keyword!  2. White spaceVisual design is one of the primary contributors to the overall user experience on your website. If your site has a poor appearance, users won’t want to stay on it. And when users keep clicking away, that tells Google to rank you lower.Visual design is composed of various elements, including everything from color schemes to page structure.But one of the main visual elements on a site is white space. White space is simply the space on a page that isn’t taken up by text, images, or other visual elements. Imagine the difference between a page completely packed with text and a page broken up into small blurbs and paragraphs.Which would you rather read? Probably the latter.Sun Auto Service demonstrates this principle seamlessly in its written web content.In their informational pieces, they make sure to break up text into small sections. With headings, images, and white space inserted between the paragraphs, it makes things feel far less cluttered, leading to easier reading and happier users.3. Compelling title tag and meta descriptionSEO starts with getting your content ranking in Google, but it doesn’t stop there. Once your content is ranking, you have to convince users that your site is the result they should click on. If you don’t, you won’t stay high in rankings for long, since Google will assume your site isn’t valuable to users.To gain clicks, you need to give each of your pages a compelling title tag and meta description, which together make up the blurb that appears in search results.The title and meta should make it clear what your business is offering and why users should click.The Exterminator in Wyoming does a fantastic job with this tactic. Their title tag makes it clear what they do and where they operate. Their meta description, meanwhile, provides a compelling call to action (CTA) and highlights their “years of experience.”4. Reputable backlinksWhen Google ranks your site, one of the things it considers is how reputable you are. If Google views your site as authoritative in your industry, it will rank you higher — and one of the best ways to seem more reputable is to earn backlinks, which are critical to SEO.Backlinks are simply where reputable sites in your industry link to your content.When Google sees a known authoritative site linking to you, it assumes you’re authoritative too and ranks you higher. To earn backlinks, you can look for broken links on reputable sites in your industry and recommend that the site replace them with new links to your content.Sweetwater offers one of the most impressive examples of SEO in this regard.

  A short piece on their website entitled “True Stereo” earned a backlink from Wikipedia, which lists it as a reference on its “Stereophonic Sound” page.   While Wikipedia links are NoFollow — which means they don’t directly impact rankings like most backlinks — the fact that Google consistently ranks Wikipedia so high in search results still benefits Sweetwater significantly, since visitors to that page may encounter the link.It’s no coincidence that that same Sweetwater piece ranks on page one for the keyword “true stereo!”5. Fast page speedsDid you know that 83% of users expect pages to load in three seconds or less? If your site doesn’t meet this expectation, you’ll have quite a few users bouncing from your site — which will tell Google that your site isn’t useful to them, causing it to rank lower.To improve your page speeds, you can implement techniques like:

Compressing imagesCaching web pagesLimiting redirects

You can check your website’s page speeds on Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool, which will give it a score between zero and 100. For an example of a site that’s managed to achieve an impressively high score, we can look at USA Flooring. USA Flooring’s desktop site earns a 93 in PageSpeed Insights, meaning they probably don’t see many users jump ship during the loading process.What is the Purpose of SEO?While there is a way to maximize results, it is almost impossible to fully manipulate search algorithms. Businesses often look to the shortest path toward ideal results with the least amount of effort, but SEO requires a lot of action and time. There is no SEO strategy where something can be changed today with the expectation of clear results tomorrow. SEO is a long-term project, with daily action and constant activity.Search engines use bots to crawl all website pages, downloading and storing that information into a collection known as an index. This index is like a library and when someone searches for something in it, the search engine acts as the librarian. The search engine pulls and displays relevant information from the search query and shows users content related to what they were looking for. Search engine algorithms analyze web pages in the index to determine the order those pages should be displayed on the SERP.Search engine optimization is an essential marketing activity to make a website or business visible on the web. But it also provides several other benefits to companies.Builds trust and credibilitySites that rank high on SERPs are considered to be of the highest quality and most trustworthy. Results shown on the first page are the most relevant, resulting in more credibility for the business or website. Having the right content on the site and a good user experience will help the website rank higher.Provides a competitive advantageWhen good SEO is deployed consistently, those that do it more and better will outrank the competition. Many businesses feel they cannot afford to not be on the first page of a search result. But if a team works toward that goal and shows ahead of the competition, they will have a competitive edge.Reaches more peopleSEO helps attract any user with intent at any time, regardless of phase of the customer journey that user is in. It relies on keywords and phrases to attract audiences to specific products and services. Businesses can create a list of keywords for which they would like to rank, then build content around those keywords.Supports content marketingBy having a list of keywords to rank for and building content around those keywords, users are more likely to find the information they seek. Content and SEO work in harmony with each other. A site will rank better by creating useful, high-quality content that is optimized for those keywords. Ensuring the keywords are present in headings, meta descriptions and the body of the content will improve rankings for those terms.Ranks better in local searchesThe use of local searches are becoming more common, with users looking for products or services “near me.” To improve listings in these searches, a company can create a Google My Business account and optimize the listing for local searches. Along with that and the localized content on the website, a user will be more likely to see local search results in their queries.Understand web environmentUsers that stay up to date on the ever-changing internet will be better able to execute the ongoing SEO needs for a website. By staying up to date, businesses can better understand how search works and make more informed decisions on how to change and adapt their strategies.Relatively inexpensiveTo have an effective SEO strategy, companies need to invest in the time and resources to be effective. There are companies that can be hired as SEO experts to manage the strategies, but companies with the right team in place can do it themselves.Get quantifiable resultsThere are tools and analytics data that can be tapped into to measure the effectiveness of SEO efforts. Google Analytics can provide comprehensive data on organic traffic. Data includes pages that customers engaged with and keywords used in the search. That data can then be cross-referenced with intended actions taken to see how SEO played a role in customer engagement or acquisition.What are SEO Principles?Here are 5 essential SEO principles every web designer should know before they launch their new website.1. Site StructureThe structure of your site is important for visitors and search engine crawlers alike. Crawlers are bots whose primary task is discovering new or updated content and potentially adding it to its index. An index is the giant list of URLs that search engines store and serve to people searching through a search engine. This process of discovery and indexation is how your site can be displayed to people using a search engine.  And as 93% of web experiences start with a search engine,  it is essential that these crawlers can discover and therefore index your content.There are four main things that you can do to ensure your site structure is helping visitors and crawls discover your content.

Create a structure that clearly leads visitors to where they want to go. If a visitor will have a hard time understanding how to interact with your web page or navigate to another page, chances are that crawlers will too.Make sure all the pages you want visitors and crawlers to find are linked to from another page. Internal links is how visitors navigate around your site and how crawls discover content.Organize the structure of your site around topics and information. Save the homepage for the big, overarching purpose of the site and break additional subjects into subpages.Keep the hierarchy of the site down to three or four layers. Content is easier to find and manage when it is not buried deep under various layers.

Lastly, it’s important to create a properly formatted and structured XML sitemap. This is a file that lives on your domain that lists out all the pages on your site you want crawlers to discover and index.  This is not something a visitor will interact with, this is just for crawlers. After you have created the sitemap and uploaded it to your domain, you can then upload it to Google Search Console.2. Site NavigationA site’s main navigation provides a visual highway through your most important pages. It is an important factor in user experience and SEO.There are three main things to account for when designing your site’s navigation: 

Ensure that the main navigation only contains links to your most important pages. You do not need to link to every single page on your site, focus on the main topic area, and potentially subtopic pages.Use descriptive names for the pages so that users and crawlers know what to expect from visiting each page.Through careful coding, ensure that crawlers can crawl your navigation. Most sites today have drop-down menus with nested links to deeper pages. If those drop-downs are coded incorrectly, bots will not be able to crawl it, thus unable to discover those pages. 

There are three main types of navigation menus: single bar, double bar, and drop-down menus. Single bar menus are the simplest and the easiest for bots to crawl, but they can only contain a few links. Double bars are still fairly easy to crawl and can contain more links. Drop-down menus are best suited for large sites with many important pages. Note that the main navigation doesn’t have to appear the same for your mobile site and desktop but it does need to have the same links. 3. URL StructureSome people consider URLs to be the third most important factor in ranking in searches. Regardless of the exact rank, it is important to have short, readable, semantically accurate URLs. In other words, the URL should accurately describe the page and what it’s about. Here are a few things to consider: 

Make your URLs as short as is still readable and make sense given the hierarchy of the page. Use hyphens to separate words for readability. For instance, the following URL is to an article about url structure, which is in the category of technical SEO: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/technical-seo/url-structure/. You can see “technical seo” and “url structure” are broken up by hyphens to support readability while still being properly structured. Include descriptive keywords where practical. While the URL is not a prominent ranking factor, keywords also contribute the visitors’ understanding of the page.

4. On-Page ElementsOn-page elements are considered one the most influential factors in SEO for a page, with title tags playing a prominent role for both search engines and visitors. Make sure on-page elements contain valuable information for crawlers and visitors, are the correct length, and above all accurately convey what the page is about.There are three main things in this category that contribute to SEO: titles, meta descriptions, and proper headings:

Titles should be 50-60 characters, include strategically placed keywords, and contain a reference to the brand behind the website. Most importantly, titles should describe the content accurately. Meta descriptions should be between 130 and 165 characters. A meta description is a brief intro to a page that you see when you search something on Google. This is your first chance to talk to your potential visitors so it should be a brief description that immediately captures the reader’s attention.Heading tags are used to give structure to the page with the most important for SEO being the H1 and H2. Each page should have a unique to that page H1 and H2 that contain descriptive keywords.You should avoid duplicate meta descriptions or titles, even in a series of articles around a similar topic. This is because Google will generally only show one version of duplicate content, which means several of the articles may not even show up in search results. Branding in the page title would be the exception.Lastly, readability is the most important thing to consider; these areas should never sacrifice ease of reading for keyword placement. While keywords are important, they should always be used in proper sentences that make sense to people, not robots. 

5. Image OptimizationImages build a richer experience for visitors and search engines care about how people interact with websites. For example, blog articles with images get up to 94% more views than those without. Images can also contribute to SEO when appropriate optimizations are done. Here are a few things to keep in mind when adding images to your website and optimizing them. 

Use keyword-rich names for your image files, separating words with hyphens. Naming your image files with relevant keywords will give crawlers a useful hint about their content.By adding relevant image title and alt attributes you add meaningful content for searching engines and improve the user experience. The image title can be displayed with a visitor hovers over an image and the alt attribute is read aloud for visitors using screen readers and other accessibility tools. Descriptions should be accurate, readable, and ideally should include relevant keywords.The size of the images you use can dramatically impact how quickly your website will load. This is important because search engines care greatly about how fast a site is, along with it impacting visitors’ experiences. Use the smallest file size that still renders correctly and explore different file types. For example, JPEGs are usually more SEO friendly than PNGs because of compression levels.

What are the Two Techniques of SEO?SEO techniques are classified into two broad categories:

White Hat SEO – Techniques that search engines recommend as part of a good design.Black Hat SEO – Techniques that search engines do not approve and attempt to minimize the effect of. These techniques are also known as spamdexing.

White Hat SEOAn SEO tactic is considered a White Hat if it has the following features:

It conforms to the search engine’s guidelines.It does not involve in any deception.It ensures that the content a search engine indexes, and subsequently ranks, is the same content a user will see.It ensures that web page content should have been created for the users and not just for the search engines.It ensures good quality of the web pages.It ensures the availability of useful content on the web pages.

Always follow a White Hat SEO tactic and do not try to fool your site visitors. Be honest and you will definitely get something more.Black Hat or SpamdexingAn SEO tactic is considered as Black Hat or Spamdexing if it has the following features:

Attempting ranking improvements that are disapproved by the search engines and/or involve deception.Redirecting users from a page that is built for search engines to one that is more human-friendly.Redirecting users to a page that was different from the page the search engine ranked.Serving one version of a page to search engine spiders/bots and another version to human visitors. This is called Cloaking SEO tactic.Using hidden or invisible text or with the page background color, using a tiny font size or hiding them within the HTML code such as “no frame” sections.Repeating keywords in the metatags, and using keywords that are unrelated to the website content. This is called metatag stuffing.Calculated placement of keywords within a page to raise the keyword count, variety, and density of the page. This is called keyword stuffing.Creating low-quality web pages that contain very little content but are instead stuffed with very similar keywords and phrases. These pages are called Doorway or Gateway Pages.Mirror websites by hosting multiple websites – all with conceptually similar content but using different URLs.Creating a rogue copy of a popular website that shows contents similar to the original to a web crawler, but redirects web surfers to unrelated or malicious websites. This is called page hijacking.

Always stay away from any of the above Black Hat tactics to improve the rank of your site. Search engines are smart enough to identify all the above properties of your site and ultimately you are not going to get anything.What are SEO Tools?SEO tools assist website owners to rank higher in search engine results. This helps optimize Web content by analyzing content for keywords, backlinks, and other SEO considerations.SEO tools investigate the potential of Web pages for high placement on search engine ranking pages. They provide information on backlinks and keywords as well as insights into SEO competition on the Internet.For SEO experts and webmasters, monitoring the domain is crucial to determining how to optimize for search. You should consider the following items.Keywords:Keyword Analysis is the process of determining the most common search terms that relate to your website and the competitors using those words. They help search engines, like Google, determine which sites to match to users’ queries.Tool: Google Keyword PlannerContent:Website content should contain keywords to match search queries. Placing keywords in the titles, descriptions or tags of the content are also important for search engine optimization (SEO). Content should not only contain keywords, but it must be interesting, relevant and unique to rank highly in organic search results. Complex algorithms measure all of these factors to provide Internet users with the best possible websites for their search.Backlinks:Backlinks are also important for a good ranking. A backlink is a link to your site from another site. Sites with a high amount of traffic can help drive traffic to your site. The number of times your site has links from other sites also affects your ranking.Domain:Domains are important for SEO because Google and other search engines scan the URLs for keywords so they can determine the content of the site. Having keywords in the URL helps Google determine what the page is about and is one of the factors in matching a site to a person’s search.Tool:  SearchmetricsRanking:Many SEO tools are designed to measure the ranking of individual websites. They rank individual pages and entire websites by comparing them to competitor websites. To keep search rankings high, it is important to use keywords appropriately, publish unique content frequently and publish backlinks to the site whenever possible.Example: rankingCoachTraffic:Some tools help measure the flow of visitors from external sources and within the website. It measures how often users come to the site, where they came from and how they navigate through the site. They can also show which keywords the user searched to then land on the domain.Example: Google AnalyticsSocial media:Some SEO tools analyze data from social networks like Facebook, Google+ or Twitter. They measure roughly how many users access the blog or other sub-pages of a domain, and they can measure how often blog pages or articles are linked via social media. In addition, many tools help identify trends in social networks by looking for frequently used keywords.Example: HootsuiteHow can I do SEO for my Website?Let’s look at 10 essential SEO for beginners tips that you can use to improve your website right now.1. Do keyword research and use relevant terms Keywords play an important role in SEO. A keyword indicates the main topic of your article and it’s what makes it possible for people to find your article once they make an online search for a topic of interest. A keyword is essentially what people will type in when searching for something. This is why you should make sure your keyword aligns with the search intent of your target audience. It can be a short keyword like ‘digital marketing’ or a long-tail keyword such as how to create a good digital advertising campaign’. Shorter keywords usually have a higher search volume. This means they can be more difficult to rank for. Long-tail-keywords have a lower search volume, but in comparison, they are very specific. The advantage is that you are able to target the exact audience interested in that. It’s best to go for a mix of both – long-tail and short – keywords. Furthermore, it’s ideal to consider search volume and rank the difficulty of the keyword intended on being used. The search volume indicates how often people search for this specific keyword. A higher search volume means that people are more interested in this topic. The rank difficulty, on the other hand, indicates how difficult it will be to rank in search engine results. Keywords are vital, but are not the only component to optimizing a website. You need to focus on other important aspects to boost traffic. Let’s look further at some strategic ways to optimize your website.2. Place keywords throughout your pageEach page or blog post has different relevant keywords. For this article, the keyword is ‘SEO for Beginners’. That’s probably the term you searched and ended up here!Ideally,  your chosen keywords should be in the:

Title of the postThe URLThe first and last paragraph of the postIn the text organically throughout the postThe tags of images used  

As long as they don’t disrupt the flow of the article, put them in!  Just beware of ‘Keyword Stuffing’, which we discuss further in this post. 3. Include SEO in PermalinksA permalink is a URL you see when you access a webpage. Permalinks say a lot about the overall structure of your website, they shouldn’t be too long and at the same time, clearly describe what the webpage is about. For the reader and also for the bot crawling your website. As mentioned before, search engine bots crawl all of the pages on your site to fully understand the topic of your site and index them correctly. Use clear and meaningful words in your URL. For example, if you have an online book store, structure your pages with the permalinks to show people what they are accessing and to help contextualize the overall information. It makes the hierarchy clear to search engines and helps SEO. This could look like this:  www.lovelybooks.com – is your website www.lovelybooks.com/selfhelp – can be a page where people can find all books in the selfhelp categorywww.lovelybooks.com/selfhelp/BOOKTITLE  – is the page where they’ll find information about a specific book in this categoryAs the name suggests, a permalink is permanent, making it important to determine the right ones for your pages. It’s not encouraged to use specific dates or information that might change. Why? Ideally, you will keep updating your page over time. Having a page that has been online for quite some time plays into better SEO. Ideally, you don’t want to create pages you’ll always delete. Older pages don’t rank, just because they have been published for longer. They rank because over time, they managed to indicate authority through generated traffic, link-building, and more. Being able to update your pages with fresh and relevant information is key and that means creating a timeless URL structure. Let’s say you write an article about ‘Top 5 Marketing tips for 2020’. This is a great topic! But in your permalink, leave 2020 out. By doing so you can update the article and later write about the ‘Top 5 Marketing Tips for 2021’. The same rule applies for pages for specific holidays, like Black Friday. It happens annually and you’ll want to reuse this page for the coming years. 4. Hyperlink your existing contentIf the post you are currently writing is related to another post you’ve already written, link it! It’s good practice to hyperlink your content to other posts and pages on your website. This will contribute to a better user experience by helping the reader further discover related content and navigate to other pages on your site, as well as helping bots in indexing and contextualizing your web pages. 5. Write high-quality content. No keyword stuffing! Of course, you should write content that engages readers. Make sure to cover your topic in full and don’t leave out information that might be important. It’s essential that you give your audience an overview of the desired topic and answers catering to their needs. More words do not necessarily equal higher quality, but as it indicates that the topic has been covered in-depth, it can help. As backlinko.com points out, there is a correlation between word count and ranking, as well as the depth of the article and ranking. Besides covering your topic in full, writing in a clear, yet elegant and conversational way works wonders. Don’t place your keyword all over your article in hope to have a high keyword density. Trying to cheat the system by placing as many keywords as they can everywhere, will not work and many actually get penalized for it. Search engines are highly intelligent and can recognize keyword stuffing. 6. Optimize your images From a readability perspective, images are very important. They help visualize your content and help make it more understandable to readers. But they are also important for SEO, as they help your website to be crawled. An image can’t be crawled, but what can be crawled and indexed is the image ALT-text, in other words, the image description. Using your keyword as the Image ALT-Text will make sure that Google will index it for that specific keyword. Have you ever noticed the images that appear on top of your search results? They are also a great way to lead people to your website, and consequently indicate that your website and your images are relevant to the search topic. Compressing your images is also an important factor. Website speed is crucial to SEO and the image size and format can play a big role in that. So make sure to optimize your images correctly. You can easily do so by using image compression tools.7. Page speed Your page speed is incredibly important for website ranking and it’s been used as a ranking factor by Google since 2018. People spend literally seconds on your homepage before choosing if they want to explore it further or jump off. A fast-loading website ensures an ideal user experience. If your page takes too long to load, it will have serious consequences due to the lack of time people are willing to wait now, resulting in a higher bounce rate. Although bounce rate is not a factor that directly influences your ranking, it is tied directly to your page speed. 8. Don’t forget your mobile version! As people increasingly use their mobile phones to access the internet, it’s a necessity to optimize your website for smart devices. If not, you’ll end up having a high bounce rate, because let’s be honest, no one wants to stay on a website that is not formatted right for your phone. Incorrect formatting could have annoying faults such as buttons that don’t work or having to scroll to the side just to see the page entirely. A positive user experience makes people want to stay and explore your website, which again indicates that your page is relevant for the keyword you chose. In fact, mobile formatting is so important that Google announced it will soon be starting with mobile-first indexing of websites. 9. Technical SEO We talked about creating a good website structure in section 3, which can already be considered a part of technical SEO. But technical SEO goes beyond just permalinks and choosing the right keywords. It’s about creating a responsive design for your website. This topic is very specific and technical, so it goes beyond what an SEO for beginners guide would describe. Nevertheless, it’s important to point it out here. Work with a technical SEO expert, as well as with your team to understand how the ideal website structure and design should look for your target audience. 10. Update your pages and contentYou will regularly want to do an SEO audit to update your content. Especially since information and trends are rapidly changing and you don’t want to be penalized on search rankings because of outdated information. Go over older pages and sites, evaluate the content and check if it’s all optimized correctly. If your content has no purpose anymore, not optimized as required it will more likely hurt your ranking.