Search Engine Optimization
What is optimization of search engine?
Search engine optimization is the science of improving a website to increase its visibility when people search for products or services. The more visibility a website has on search engines, the more likely it is that brand captures business.
Different methods and approaches to SEO
A common confusion among SEO newbies as well as some old-timers is the classification of SEO methods/approaches and types together. These are two different terms.
Below are the three most common approaches to search engine optimization:
White hat SEO
White hat SEO techniques are Google’s recommended approach to ranking any web page or website. By doing this, you’re getting on Google’s good books, helping you to better promote your business online without any form of negativity.
Some white hat SEO techniques include:
- Publishing the highest-quality text content on your website.
- Creating a user-friendly interface.
- Sharing your page link on social media: any strategy that helps your site gain traffic must be employed and link sharing are one of them.
- Optimizing HTML: optimizing HTML simply means that you constantly check your site’s codes to see if there’s anything that could potentially make it lag.
White hat SEO is, no doubts, the best SEO method/practice to follow. It is time-consuming but it will help Google to consider your website as one that follows all the stated guidelines and rules.
Black Hat SEO
Black hat SEO is a much faster way to get results as much as it is a faster way to get your site deleted from Google’s server. Black hat SEO techniques are all about manipulation and exploitation of Google’s algorithms.
Some of these black hat techniques include:
- Link spamming
- Keyword stuffing
- Over-optimized HTML tags and headings
- Using way too many pictures
- Hidden texts/links
- Buying backlinks
- Publishing copied text, and more.
Grey Hat SEO
Grey hat SEO is a little mix of the two approaches to SEO already mentioned above. As the name implies, it simply means being in that little grey area where it seems they’re doing what’s right and at the same time looking for Google’s trouble.
Google may never ban your page for using this technique but they will paint a bad image of your business or even prevent Google from ranking your site after a while.
Some grey hat tactics include:
- Publishing spun content written by inefficient bots
- Paying for false reviews
- Exchanging links
- Publishing articles with clickbait headlines
The Four (4) Different Types of SEO
1. On-page SEO (on-site SEO)
As the name suggests, on-page SEO, also known as on-site SEO is an SEO activity that is carried out directly on the page or site. It involves the optimization of on-site ranking factors like meta descriptions, keywords, meta titles, images, headers, and others.
What does it take to carry out a successful on-page SEO?:
1. SEO Keyword Research
1.2. Quality SEO Content
1.3. Internal Linking For SEO
Internal linking has a role to play and a benefit to offer to your site. They have the power to keep users glued to your website for hours, reading several articles on several pages and giving Google the impression that you’re dishing out quality results to the Google search query.
But first, what are internal links?
Internal links are URLs that lead to another or several other pages on your website. What a URL does is suggest to the visitor that there are other pages on this same website that offer more grounded details about this topic.
The visitor may decide to follow the link and come back to the original page or just continue to read the content on the first page.
Internal linking can also be links to high-authority pages in your industry. At first thought, it may seem like you’re driving a chunk of your traffic directly to another website. However, this is where expertise comes in. You don’t direct a link to businesses of your competitors. Only to websites that serve a neutral purpose.
1.4. Metadata SEO Optimization
Metadata is what informs Google of what your website or page contains. To be clearer, your metadata is a huge determinant of what keywords you’re ranking for.
If you were to publish an article on, “Best wholesale cabinets for small kitchens,” your metadata will contain the key phrases, “Wholesale cabinets.” When a Google search is conducted with these terms, your website will pop up somewhere on Google’s search results pages.
Your metadata can be divided into two and they are meta descriptions and meta titles or page titles. The meta title is the clickable text that appears in blue, serving as the heading or title of the article you’re about to read. The meta description is the short sentence you’ll see right below the meta title on the search results page.
To boost your page rankings, ensure to add the keywords in the metadata to help Google properly index your page and understand exactly what you intend to rank for.
1.5. Image SEO Optimization
No matter what type of SEO you want to conduct, you must add some media files to your content to boost your ranking chance.
Images help your content appear more attractive to readers and helps them understand your stance without using too many words. Descriptions are made easier with images.
When a search is carried out on Google images, your optimized images will appear on the list and the searcher can click on it to direct them to your website.
To optimize your images means to add the necessary key phrases or words to them. images also make it easier for people with visual disabilities to understand what the page is all about.
2. Off-page SEO (off-site SEO)
Off-page SEO is the exact opposite of on-page. off-page SEO focuses on all your SEO activities outside your website. However, whether we’re talking about off-page SEO, on-page SEO, local SEO, or even technical SEO, one thing remains constant — rankings.
What do you do outside your website — that is not black hat SEO — that can improve your rankings across several search engines? We’ve listed a few steps to take in that direction:
2.1. Guest blogging
Guest blogging is a system of content marketing and link building that is done outside any platform that you own. Guest blogging is aimed at allowing you to drive referral traffic from a website of higher authority than yours. Does it sound complicated? Wait.
Assuming that you run a business where you sell household appliances and want to write a guest blog for a website with high authority in that niche that isn’t your direct competitor? You would choose a site such as “The Spruce.”
Now, the idea is that you will add a few links to the content you wrote for the site, leading readers to your site. If those links are properly placed, readers will find your site.
Now, this sounds like a good way to get organic traffic but you don’t even need to get the traffic from the high authority site. Google automatically assumes that your website is great since one of the biggest sites in their server is linking back to you for information.
2.2. H.A.R.O
HARO simply means Help A Reporter Out. Journalists often request help from experts on certain topics in the industry. When you offer the information they need with some amount of expertise, they’ll link back to your website in their publication.
2.3. Competitor Research and Analysis
Run quick research on your competitors to understand their backlink profiles and what websites are linking back to them. This will help you understand which authority websites are in your industry that you may not know.
2.4. Internet ads
Aside from SEO, there’s another kind of marketing known as search engine marketing. Although search engine marketing — also often called SEO marketing — will not get you organic traffic, it will help you put your page content on Google’s first page.
Internet ads can also refer to Facebook and Instagram ads that help you target your customers more effectively.
2.5. Press Distribution
Businesses often ignore the need for a press release. You will not get all your website traffic from search queries. Sometimes, a simple publication about your business in a local newspaper can help boost your website SEO.
Although it doesn’t look like any type of SEO effort, it helps you get more traffic to your site, which in turn helps search engines consider your site as an authority in the field.
3. Technical SEO
Technical SEO has nothing to do with your page content. However, it can improve your appearance on organic search results. Most digital marketing newbies mistake tech SEO for black hat SEO. Whereas technical SEO aims at improving user experience by optimizing the website, black hat SEO reduces it.
Technical SEO refers to all the SEO activities that help to improve your site and make it easier for visitors to navigate. Below are a few things to consider:
3.1. Site Load Time
Visitors no longer have the patience to wait for pages to load. They want the information and they want it right now. If your web pages take an eternity to load, visitors will abandon your article and move on to the next website offering a similar post. Guess what! The other sites have immensely optimized their load time.
The average attention span of individuals is 8 seconds. If you grab your visitor’s attention with your metadata, you have less than 8 seconds to prove to them that your web page contains the information they need. Your site load time should take more than 2 seconds of that time.
3.2. Mobile-Friendliness
Businesses often assume that their visitors are only checking them out from their computers. That’s hardly ever the case. Some factors influence a greater need for users to check your website or business from a mobile phone.
Several studies have proven that the more mobile-friendly a site is, the more likely it is for their blog or article to be read.
3.3. Crawl Error Identification
Sometimes, a tiny error in your code could make your website completely invisible to Google’s or other search engines bots. Aside from codes, your page may have some other issues including missing H1 and H2 tags and duplicate metadata.
3.4. Keyword Cannibalization Audit
One solution to use in this situation is to combine both articles into one comprehensive blog post.
3.5. Duplicate Content Audit
Run a comprehensive audit of your entire site to see which blog post has similar content with another one. Once you find it, scrape the content or edit it and publish it again.
4. Local SEO
Local SEO is one of the types of SEO that is more location-specific than the others. Local SEO deals with rankings in a specific state, city, or town. The main idea is to increase the online presence of a company within its state.
Asides from being a great way to get customers online to locate your land-based store, it can also be a superb source for link building and organic search. This is because, local searches such as, “Cabinet sellers near me” will deliver search results that are specific to the searcher’s locale.
Local SEO rankings are ultimately tied to how well you optimize your “Google My Business” profile. Google has specific guidelines and rules that should guide you when optimizing the profile because your services will only be suggested based on proximity, reviews, business hours, services rendered, and a few more.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a task that requires full attention because it is the single most crucial and cherished way to get your potential customers to your website post by post.
However, the process and tactics required can be a little tricky for beginners, which is why it is highly recommended that you hire a digital marketing company to help your company grow online and achieve a reasonable online presence.
Conclusion
Search engine optimization is an integral part of digital marketing and content marketing and must be given the attention it deserves no matter what your digital marketing tactics are.
