The most important factor to have in mind when you work on search engine optimization is to think about Google. Its search is like a battlefield of many websites, hungry for the win.
1. How The Search Operates
When you do a search, you are not actually searching the web, but the index of the web. You do the search with the help of software programs called spiders. Everything you search is linked, it is like a spider web.
How Do Spiders Work?
- they crawl the web pages
- follow the links on the pages
- fetch the pages they point to
- follow the links on the pages
- fetch the pages they link to
This whole process happens until billions of pages are indexed. All of those are stored across thousands of machines.
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How Fast The Search Goes?
The software searches the index in order to find a page that includes the search terms. In that case, out of thousands of results, only hundreds are possible to be relevant, but how Google decides which are relevant? Which document is the one that you need? – It is all in the question asking.
The words that you are typing in the search are called keywords. It is important for Google to see which page contains your keywords and whether that page includes synonyms of those words. The software of the search engine optimization also checks the appearance of the keyword in the title or the URL.
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They also check if the page is from a quality or low-quality website, as well as its page rank. The rank is invented by the founders of Google, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin. They invented this so that they can distinguish each page by the links they contain. They see how many outside links point to it as well as the importance of those links.
These factors are combined altogether in order to produce an overall score of a page. Thus, they send you back your search results about half a second after you make your search.
2. How People Interact With Search Engines
One of the most effective marketing plans for your website is empathy. Once you target the audience and make strong strategy you can keep the users, make them unique and lead them to the path of loyal customers. However, before you do that, there are three things regarding the search query your audience makes.
- DO – When a consumer visits your website, he wants to DO something. For example, he wants to buy a product, service or listen to music.
- LEARN – A human’s mind is hungry for information. Whether it is a gossip, a fact, the name of the best or the most expensive restaurant in the world to eat – it is information to be LEARNED.
- GO – Just like in real life, a user wants to GO to a place. For example, he wants to go on Instagram, Facebook or other homepages, site or social network.
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Each person that works in the marketing field needs to ask oneself the primary question “Will my visitor be satisfied with what they search for?” As a marketer, you need to be aware of the fact that the internet and the search engine optimization are the most responsible and the most powerful sources for serving a relevant result to a consumer.
People are only looking at the things that are shown to them, or close to their eyes. Therefore, people are only clicking the results that are the closest to the top of the page. Another factor you need to know is that the organic results come before the paid ones. Once you achieve organic search results, you start swimming with the pros of the SEO in the water.
3. Why Is Search Engine Optimization Fundamental?
First, you need a website, then you need to make it easy to use with the search engine optimization for both the search engine robots and the users as well. In spite of the fact that the robots are smart, they still can’t see the things like a human eye can.
As previously mentioned, in the first paragraph, the search results are given to humans with the help of artificial intelligence. Additionally, you need to make sure that your content gets seen – by both robots and users.
Furthermore, the engines are not smart enough in formulas to check the quality on the web. Their technology is based on metrics. These metrics track relevance and importance and track what people are doing. For example, what they react to, what they link to or what they comment on. In order to achieve in creating something that people will link to, talk about and comment on, you need to have a great content.
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There are ten results on each Google page. The higher you rank – the better. Additionally, the first three pages are the most clicked. Those are usually the financial incentives and the call to action is one of the most important factors here.
Websites compete among each other, which means that you need to provide yours with helpful and knowledgeable content. Therefore, SEO puts all of the attention on you while making it beneficial for your websites rankings, traffic, and visibility on Google.
4. Search Engine Optimization & Keywords
The keywords usage and the targeting are important for the search process. They are the language that the SEO speaks, and you need to learn that language. As I mentioned before, the whole search is based on the keywords. The engines crawl the page contents on the web and they keep track on the keywords that are indexed and stored on those pages.
One of the most important things to have in mind is to know where you are placing your keywords. If you want to succeed in a higher ranking in the search, place the keywords in the title, the text, and the metadata.
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As you do this, you are making the keywords more specific and more importantly, you are making it much easier for the robots to locate them. This leads to nothing but a benefit for a higher rank.
On the other hand, you need to be careful with the relevant keywords. If you are writing about a particular topic, you need to actually write about that topic. For example, if your keyword is “Budapest Architecture” then you need to write about the architecture in Budapest. You need to include history, centuries, visits etc. You cannot place this keyword in content about “Types of trucks”. If you do this, then your path to a high ranking on top of the page of Google will be a long road to nowhere.
5. On-Page Optimization
When you are working on the content, there comes the on-page search engine optimization. This is my favorite. The optimization and the targeting have a great role in the world of the ranking algorithms, therefore there are rules to follow in order to succeed in the page rank. It is important to follow these rules because a keyword can make or break the popularity of a page.
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There are places to use the keyword phrase and they are:
- In the title tag. Use it at least once in the title and use it at the beginning.
- Use it once near the top of the page.
- Two or three times in the body on the page.
- Once in the alt attribute on an image of a page. This not only helps with the web search but with the image search as well.
- In the URL use it once.
- Once in the meta description tag. The meta description helps in engaging the users and attracting more clicks.
- Do not add an anchor text link in the keyword. This is not allowed because it is known as keyword cannibalization.
6. Researching Keywords
How and when a keyword rank depends on the search box. Before you place a keyword on your page, you need to know which is the most relevant. By learning this you can learn which terms to target with the search engine optimization.
Knowing how much a keyword is valuable, leads to more sales. In order to understand the value of a keyword, we need to understand the value of our product first.
If you are not able to do this by yourself, there are Ad Campaigns which help you keep track on this. Google Adwords and Bing Adcenter allow you to track the impressions and the clicks. This allows you to keep track on the competition. Knowing how much the competition is ahead of you, or you are ahead of them is a valuable information that will encourage you to keep going.
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It is highly essential for you to understand the value of a keyword because you do not want to stand out of those top 10 websites on the first page on Google. If you are not one of those ten, then it can take you years in order to get there. Therefore, you need to understand the demand of the keyword first, and then implement it in your content.
There are many keyword explorer tools you can use in order to understand the weight of a keyword and its usage. You can always use some help by the experts. Every expert was once a beginner. The key is in the journey, make it valuable.
Conclusion
Search engine optimization requires constant research, testing, and tracking of results. SEO is similar to Social Media Marketing only in the way of promoting a service, product or a website, but the work process is different.
