The most basic explanation of SEO is the process of tweaking your website, so Google likes it more and places it higher in the results segment of their services. It’s like following the rules at work and buying your boss a coffee a couple of times to ensure that you get the promotion that you’ve always been hoping for.
When it comes to search engines, you might think that the human element is not there, but you’d be wrong. The optimization process has an end goal that is directly connected to the users who are going to browse your page. Click here to read more.
The only thing that’s mechanical in the whole process is the tactics to use and the rules that have been implemented by companies like Yahoo, Bing, Brave, Google, and DuckDuckGo. There’s one simple reason why you should want to rank higher.
The better your position is, the more organic traffic you’re going to get. Getting more traffic is directly linked to selling more products and making more money. Who doesn’t want to make more money?
How does the entire process work?
When the internet was first invented, there were only a couple of computers that used it. After a few years, internet service providers started giving everyone the opportunity to join in on all of the fun. From just a couple of nodes, the number of connected devices started to grow exponentially.
The first language that was used to code websites was HTML, which stands for a hypertext markup language. Hypertext is a tech term for linking. Those blue links that we click on nowadays have been around for more than 30 years.
Since they’re still around, this means that it’s still relevant to use them. Linking from and to other websites creates networks that are interwoven with each other. If you try to map everything out, all of the connections between pages will resemble a spider web. That’s one of the reasons why the internet is also called the world wide web.
A fun fact about webs is that spiders want to crawl on them, and that’s the name that users call the algorithms that scan content. Whenever you publish a website, there is an algorithm that sends a crawler to see what kinds of words you have used.
In the background, there are tons of artificial intelligence and machine learning operations that are calculating how your new page scores against others. If you provide expertise and authority for a specific niche, the chances of you ranking higher increase. Visit this page for more info.
When the crawler has finished scanning your new page, it takes the newly found information and stores it as an index. This index is later stored in a database that is filled with libraries of similar pages. Then, when a user searches for a specific term, the whole process resembles a librarian bringing you a book.
The algorithm knows which shelf to scan and then presents the results in a list. The ranking process is determined by a lot of signals and criteria. If Google was a real person, then it would work as a librarian that has read all of the books that have ever existed and then gives you a specific answer.
Now, SEO companies are trying to look at indicators and proxies that determine how effectively a new website can rank for the information that it provides. The whole process is completely fair, and you can’t pay money to be in the first position.
In the culture of Chicago where every participant gets a trophy, this is a game that’s played fair and square, and the odds are always against you. That’s one of the reasons why you need to put constant effort into the game.
What is the significance of getting the first position?
One of the most interesting things about rankings is that you can’t be number one in different categories. In real life, you can’t be the best astrophysicist and the best surgeon. Google and other search engines look at things in the same way.
Every site is about a specific niche, and billions of individuals are doing searches every single minute. This means that every answer is critical when it comes to users coming back to the platform when they have another question or problem that needs to be answered or solved. If you’re at the top, then users will be presented with your site instead of others.
This means that you will have more influence over your current customer base and have the potential to increase it. During the last several years, the results page has evolved to provide specific answers faster, which keeps people on Google instead of leading them to third parties. Click here to read more.
This is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you can increase your exposure since the search engine will show the source of information. On the other hand, the users might not proceed on your site, where they will enter your sales funnel and go through all of the stages of the inbound marketing process. In any case, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be trying to improve your score.
Everything works together
There are two types of SEO. Those include the on-page and the off-page type. Focusing on one and not the other is going to be a costly mistake. You need to remember that everything works together. It’s just like driving a car.
You can’t start if there is no gas and having a lot of gas doesn’t matter if the engine is broken. Trying to get the best of both worlds is the best strategy that has worked for thousands of websites. The most important thing will always be great content, and you need to find ways that will keep users engaged with your site for longer periods of time.
Moving animations, videos, gifs, and interactive widgets are amazing ways to gain the attention of your visitors. The more time they spend interacting with your brand, the higher the chances for a sale, and the better it’s going to be for your rankings.