PowerofKnowing

There was a time when having an online business presence was shocking and surprising but now it is very common. Almost every business has an online presence. This makes SEO more important than ever. People are interested in shopping online like never before.

Some people confuse search engine optimization with internet marketing. We would say that SEO is one of the tools in your internet marketing tool kit. SEO itself is not internet marketing but it can be a very important part of your over all internet marketing campaign.

What is SEO and Why It is Important:

SEO can be defined as “set of rules for optimizing a website or any online property for search engines in order to improve search ranking and online visibility”. It is a great tool to fine tune a website to make it more user-friendly and easier to navigate.

Millions of people search on internet and search engines serves them by providing answers to their search queries. This makes SEO marketing more important than ever. SEO can help a business grow and achieve business objectives.

Why SEO is Important:

• Whenever you search online, the search engine shows the most relevant results on the first page. You are most likely to stick with the first page only. As expert SEO will do everything to bring a website on search engine’s first page.
• Search Engine Optimization is not only limited to search engines. It also includes good practices to improve user experience and website usability.
• Users heavily rely on search engines. The more a website ranks higher, the more trust a website will gain.
• SEO can earn your business social promotion. People who visit a website will share information on social media regarding the experience they had while visiting your website.
• SEO can put your business ahead of the market competition.

Three Main SEO Stages

SEO is continuous process. It is not a onetime task. You need to be up to date with search engine policies and make changes to your website accordingly. SEO process can be break down into three stages.

Technical SEO:

Technical SEO deals with the settings you need to configure to make search engine’s job easier. Mostly it is one time job. Once you configure it correctly, you may leave it alone. Although, if search engines change their indexing or crawling policies, an SEO professional may have to make adjustments to his website accordingly.

If technical SEO is not up to the mark, a website will have problems with crawling and indexing. It will also have bad impact on a website ranking in search engine.

Onsite-SEO:

Once you are done with technical SEO, it is time to kick start onsite-SEO. It deals with website content and other elements. Search engines do not read a page like we humans do. They need different signals to understand the nature and context of content. So, here you need to have proper website structure, page titles, keywords, Meta description, optimized images, internal linking, heading structure, structured data markup etc. to send the right signals to search engines.

If you perform onsite correctly, the reward will be improved usability and credibility of your website.

Offsite-SEO:

Both technical and on-site SEO plays a key role in a website success. But how would the world know that you have created a marvel unless you make a noise and tell them. Therefore, you need off-site SEO techniques to promote your website. In off-site SEO we do it mainly by back linking.

“A back link is an incoming link to your website. Actually the link is placed on another website but point the user to your website when clicked.”

 Back link is high value ranking factor. It’s a signal of trust and depending from where it is coming, it can greatly influence the search engine ranking algorithm. If the link is coming from credible and trusted website, it will positively affect your website ranking. If the link is paid or result of an exchange, it can get you a penalty.

Let’s Sum It Up:

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a way to make it easy for search engines to understand your website and give you high ranking. It has to be an integral part of your marketing campaign. A good SEO approach can earn more traffic for your website and customers for your business.

Source: RE2QA holds the ownership of this content and its being replicated here with their formal permission. You can read the original article on their official blog where it is published by the title "How Search Engine Optimization Is Important For Business."