INTRODUCTION:

We all have heard the word “SEO” once. Its training and courses are becoming popular day by day, what is the reason, what is SEO? Why is SEO so important?

If you have these questions in your mind, don’t worry, we are here to answer all of them.

Search engine optimization can be defined as a marketing tool or in other words, we can say that it is the science of making web pages attractive to search engines.

It can also be defined as the method of taking steps to help a website or content achieve a higher rank on Google.

But how does SEO work? Well

SEO requires you to research the different contributing factors to stand on the highest possible ranking in the search engine. And in today’s world, the most important things to consider when optimizing a web page are:

• Content Quality.
• User Engagement.
• It must be Mobile friendly.
• The inbound links number and quality.

The strategic use of these things will give you the best SEO for your webpage.

In SEO, there is no consistent rule for ranking highly because the most popular search engine, that is, Google, changes its algorithm almost constantly. So, no one can make accurate predictions.

But to constantly rank high on Google, what you have to do is regularly monitor the performance of your page and make adjustments accordingly.

Since SEO works based on optimization therefore it helps the organic webpages or content with good optimization to rank higher on search engines.

SEO will help your webpage or content to get more attention. For Example, if we write “Hot Chocolate” on Google several web pages and contents will appear but their positioning is based on their SEO. The link at the top of the first page has the most optimized SEO.

If you want to understand what is SEO in detail you must know how a search engine works.

How do Search Engines work?

Because diving into this you must be thinking that why should I care about how a search engine works?

Let’s talk about this first.

• Here is why you should care about how search engines work

If you will be able to understand how search engines find, index, and rank content, you will be able to rank your website in organic search results for relevant and popular keywords.

And by ranking high on a search engine, you will get more traffic on your webpage or product.

• How search engines build their index 

The search engines have trillions of pages in their search indexes. So before we talk about ranking algorithms, let’s first dive deeper into the mechanisms that are used to build and maintain a web index.

Now let’s have a look at how Google works, step by step:

1. URLs
2. Crawling
3. Processing & rendering
4. Indexing

 

Step 1. URLs

 

The first step starts with a known list of URLs. Google discovers these through several different processes, but the three most common ones are:

From backlinks:

Google has an index containing trillions of web pages. If someone adds a link to one of your pages from one of the indexed web pages, they can find it from there.

You can see your website’s backlinks for free by using Site Explorer with Ahrefs Webmaster Tools.

From sitemaps:

The sitemaps list all of the important pages on your website. If you submit your sitemap to Google, it will help them to discover your website faster.

From URL submissions:

You can also submit individual URLs via Google Search Console.

Step 2. Crawling

 

Crawling is explained as when a computer bot called a spider (for example, Googlebot) visits and downloads the discovered pages.

But keep in mind that Google doesn’t always crawl pages in the order they discover them.

Google queues URLs for crawling which are based on a few factors that include:

• The PageRank of the URL
• How often the URL changes
• Whether it’s new or not

It is very important because search engines can help you rank your page higher than others. If you have a large website, the search engines can take some time to fully crawl it.

 

Step 3. Processing

 

Processing means the process of understanding and extracting key information from crawled pages by Google. The fact is nobody outside of Google knows every detail about this, but the important parts to understand are extracting links and storing content for indexing.

Google will render pages to fully process them that is where Google runs the page’s code to understand how it looks for users.

 

Step 4. Indexing

 

This is the last step, where the processed information from crawled pages is added to a big database called the search index. This can be said as a digital library of trillions of web pages where Google’s search results come from.

Now keep in mind that when you type into the search bar of a search engine, you’re not directly searching the internet for matching results but you are searching a search engine’s index of web pages. If a web page will not be present in the search index, search engine users will not find it. That’s why getting your website indexed in major search engines like Google is so important.

So, we are sure now you will be clear about how a search engine works, lets dive into the technical side of SEO.

 

TECHINCAL SIDE OF SEO:

Technical SEO is the process of making sure that a website meets the technical requirements of today’s search engines. Technical SEO includes the following aspects:

 

Using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL):

SSL is a security technology that forms an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. The websites that use SSL will have the URL that starts with ‘HTTPS://’ rather than ‘HTTP://’.

Mobile Friendliness:

You have to keep in mind to make your webpage responsive so that tablet and mobile users can also enjoy your website’s best display. In this way, it will also rank higher according to Google’s algorithm.

Speeding Up Your Site:

Search engines prefer sites that load quickly and the page with higher speeds ranks higher. There are many different ways to speed up your site.

Duplicate Content:

Keep in mind to keep your content unique for a higher ranking on search engines.

XML Sitemap:

An XML sitemap is a file that will help the search engine to understand your website while the crawling process. You can consider it as a ‘search roadmap’ of sorts that is helping search engines in figuring out exactly where each page is.

AMP Enabling:

AMP is a Google-backed project that aims to speed up content delivery on mobile devices with the use of a special code that is AMP HTML.

Structured Data Markup:

This is the code that helps search engines better understand the content on your website. With this code search engines indexes your website more effectively and provide more relevant results.

Register Your Website:

Google Search Console from Google and Bing Webmaster Tools from Microsoft are free tools that allow you to submit your website to their search engines for indexing.

 

ON-PAGE OPTIMIZATION:

On-page SEO refers to the act of optimizing different parts of your website that affect your Google or search engine.

You can optimize and put your website at a higher rank by keeping in mind to take care of these on-page SEO factors:

 

• Page Speed
• Site Accessibility
• Optimizing Content
• Using Keywords
• No Multiple Heading 1.
• Improving title and Meta Descriptions
• Optimizing Images
• Keeping content Up To Date
• Improve Internal Linking

By keeping track of these things and making changes to them on regular basis your website will get a higher rank in search engines.

 

OFF-PAGE OPTAMIZATION:

Off-Page SEO refers to the actions taken outside of your website to impact your rankings on the search engine results page. These are the factors to optimize the off-page SEO:

The most important off-page SEO factor is the number and quality of backlinks to your website. Some examples of ways you can build links to your website are:

• Creating catchy content that people want to link to because it is great.
• Sharing your content on social media ultimately generates links.
• The outreach e-mails to influencers in your industry that link to you.
• Analyzing your competitor’s link profile.
• Moving from unmentioned links to mentioned links.
• Finding new Link Building Opportunities.
• Optimizing Google My Business.
• Blogging as a guest on sites related to yours. These guest posts will have links back to your site.