SEO

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) for the most part is about strategic content development. While there are many actions you can take in relation to SEO, the main goal is to optimize the content and backlinks to a well-functioning website to make it more likely to be found when people search for these topics using search engines such as Google. Basically, you’re trying to fill your website with the content that you know people are looking for and to then format this content in such a way to make it more visible to search engines. This means that when people search for this content online, your website shows up. 

In simple terms, Google is a ‘questions and answers machine’! People use search engines to find answers to help them decide on a course of action and resolve needs like buying  something or finding out some information. 

Keyword research

The first goal of SEO is to anticipate the questions and topics that people are searching for. This is keyword research. The goal of keyword research is to guide your content creation. After all, when you create content that people search for, you’re likely to show up when they search! 

So, rather than guessing what type of content you should put on your website, you can be strategic and fill your website with the content that you know your customers are looking for. Then, when they search online, your website shows up as the answer to their query. They’ve asked Google a question and you are now the answer to their needs.

SEO best practices

Bear in mind, when you upload that content to your website, you need to format it using SEO best practices in relation to titles, headlines, body content, and descriptions. This will help the search engine to better understand your content and match it to what people are looking for. 

There are three main elements when it comes to SEO:

•      Technical SEO
•      On-page SEO
•      Off-page SEO

A broad understanding of these elements can help digital strategists work with SEO specialists to strategically improve your website performance, so that it becomes more visible to search engines. In this way, the content you develop drives free traffic to the website and increases your organization’s visibility.

SEO components 

Remember, the key three components of SEO are:

•      Technical SEO
•      On-page SEO
•      Off-page SEO

Technical SEO

The first area is technical optimization. Put simply, does your website function effectively from a technical perspective? 

•      Does it load smoothly? 
•      Are there speed issues? 
•      Are there mobile issues? 
•      Is it easily crawlable and indexable? 
•      Are there broken pages you need to fix?

Your website must function effectively in order to be ranked highly by search engines.

On-page SEO

The next stage is on-page optimization. Ask yourself,  Is the content on your website valuable to searchers and based on the types of themes they typically look for to help them decide and take action? 

Remember, a search engine is a database of web pages, so it’s important to ensure that the content on every page of your website is optimized in terms of the types of keywords, topics, and concepts that your audience is looking for. So, when people search for these keywords, Google matches their search to your content and it shows your website in the search results. 

Be mindful that one piece of content or one page can match to many different keywords. So, when your content development is based on robust keyword research, you can get a lot of traffic from one piece of website content. It’s important to validate how keyword variations in the page titles, in the headers, in the body copy, and in the image alt tags work together to enhance the formatting of the page content. 

On-page SEO involves knowing:

•      The types of keywords and concepts you should use in your page content, and
•      How you best format and lay out this out this content on the page

Off-page SEO

The third area is off-page optimization. This covers the actions that take place away from your website. It includes attracting backlinks to your site. 

Publishing great content alone is not enough to rank well in organic search. Web pages that are perceived by search engines as reliable and trustworthy rank highest. So, you should review and consider if you are creating the type of content that attracts quality backlinks from good websites? Do people want to link to your website because they regard it as a source of useful content? If you create quality, useful content inspired by the topics you discover in your keyword research, you will naturally attract backlinks over time. Without quality content, other websites are not going to link to you so begin by creating quality content and the links will follow as you share this content across the web, on social media and via email.

Implementing SEO

Generally, marketers work with SEO specialists who manage and control the website to optimize its performance. in most cases, you would explain to the SEO specialist what you want your website to achieve, and they would then suggest (or implement) the changes necessary to meet this goal. 

The objective of all of SEO is to strategically structure the website content in such a way as to make it more visible and crawlable by search engines. Crawlability is basically how easy or difficult it is for the search engine to read the website and understand what the themes of the content are about.  When the search engine understands your website content, you want your website to be categorized and included in Google’s organic database – or index, as it’s known. 

Another important action is to ensure your content appears naturally in more organic searches. This can help to reduce your organization’s dependency on increasingly costly strategies like paid search. It’s important to note, however, that organic and paid search strategies work very effectively together. It’s rare for an organization to rely solely on organic search. For digital strategists, the key is to find balance between the two!