SEO stands for search engine optimization and it’s a way to make your website more visible and findable to people searching for it online. It is to be used to attract potential customers, increase website traffic, and improve rankings on search engines like Google.  Easy enough, right?

This is how SEO works

Search engine optimization includes a set of strategies and techniques to boost visibility in search engine result pages. These techniques can be broken down into three main categories: On-Page SEO, Off-Page SEO, and Technical SEO.  By the end of this post, I’ll have typed “SEO” at least a dozen times, but not for rankings purposes, and it’s just the topic of conversation here.

On-Page SEO

Involves optimizing the content on a website for relevant keywords.   And, ensuring content is:

• properly structured and organized
• titles are optimized correctly
• creating meta descriptions that draw in readers, and more.

Off-Page SEO

Focuses on building relationships with other websites by creating backlinks from high authority sites. Do people share your content? Quote it? More importantly, do they TRUST you? This increases the overall trustworthiness and relevancy of a site. It also helps to generate more organic web traffic.

Technical SEO

Optimizes the infrastructure (I call this “under the hood”) of a website such as page speed optimization, mobile friendliness tests, and code validation tests to ensure a user-friendly experience when visiting your website. The goal is to make it easier for search engines to crawl your site so they can give it better rankings in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

1 & 2. Start optimizing your website by doing keyword research.

Use tools like Google Trends or keyword research tools to find the keywords that are most relevant to your business. Once you’ve identified the right keywords create content around them—make sure you have titles and headings that emphasize those keywords, so that when people search for them they will be more likely to land on your page.

3. Next step is link building.

Link building consists of getting other websites to link back to yours as a reference or endorsement. The more backlinks you earn from reputable sources, the better chance you have of ranking higher on SERPs. You can do this by sharing quality content with other webmasters or writing guest blog posts on related websites.

Mobile optimized website

4. Finally, optimize your website design with mobile-friendliness in mind.

Fast load times are essential for a good user experience which is important for SEO ratings since Google takes page speed into account when ranking websites in their SERP results. If users have a hard time navigating through or viewing your pages due to slow load times, odds are they won’t stick around.

This is also why mobile-friendly design is paramount!  As of February 2023, 60.4% of websites are accessed by mobile devices.  The image to the right (or below) is an example of a mobile-ready website.

These are just some basic tips on how SEO works but if implemented correctly with patience over time it can yield amazing results.  To further your understanding of SEO and how it works, here are the source references for this article.

Sources

• Google Trends: https://trends.google.com/trends/?geo=US
• Keyword research tools: https://www.semrush.com/blog/keyword-research-guide-for-seo/
• Guest blog posts: https://neilpatel.com/blog/guest-posting/#Advantages_of_Guest_Posting
• Site speed optimization: https://moz.com/learn/seo/page-speed
• Mobile-friendly design tips: https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites
• Internet Traffic from Mobile Devices (Feb 2023) https://explodingtopics.com/blog/mobile-internet-traffic