Given that the internet presents us with an ever-dynamic and crowded space, winning visibility for your brand could prove to be a tricky thing.
Many studies have shown that, on an average, people carry out more than 2.2 million searches in the Internet's most popular search engine Google on any given day. Besides there the other search engines like Yahoo, Bing, Baidu and others that have comparatively fewer users.
Nevertheless, search engines are constantly evolving and what worked for you yesterday may not necessarily work for you today, and what works for you today may not work for you tomorrow. However, the success of your business largely depends on the rank of your website in these search results. In fact, a recent study by a US-based digital marketing company points out that less than 10% of people visit the second page of a Google search, and if your website is getting featured on the second page of a search result, you’re nearly invisible.
While having great products or services to offer is great but not giving it the deserving visibility is equivalent to being non-existent, and this is where SEO is of relevance to your business.
Even though we know that SEO stands for ‘search engine optimization’, most often than not, most of us are quite clueless as to what needs to be optimized.
It's true that it's the term 'keywords' that first comes to our mind when we hear the word SEO but just loading the content of your business website with ‘keywords’ will not help you in ranking high on search engines.
While it used to do the trick in the past but ever since the introduction of Google’s Panda updates, longer and more unique content is more favoured by the search engine. This means that unlike before, Google will now look into not just keyword density on your webpages but also the quantity, quality, and relevance of your content, which makes content optimization a key factor for SEO in the years ahead.
Nevertheless, SEO is not just about content but much more.
Let’s try to understand the other important aspects of SEO that would help your website rank higher in search engines.
White Hat Vs Black Hat Vs Grey Hat
There are three types of SEO techniques in practice and you must wisely pick the one that would bring the desired benefits to your business.
The first type is the 'White Hat’, which is typically SEO best practices by following the recommendations suggested by search engine companies. This includes having relevant content, relevant links and references, well-labeled images, complete sentences with good spelling and grammar, standard-compliant HTML and, unique and relevant page titles.
In general, ‘White Hat’ SEO focuses on human audience and not search engine bots, and it is aimed at producing results that last longer and help in building a sustainable audience-base for your business.
Contrary to this, the 'Black Hat' SEO is about techniques employed not keeping the human audience in mind but to work around the search engine algorithms, and pump up your website's rank in search results. It makes use of techniques like duplicate content, invisible text and stuffed keywords, clocking or redirecting users to another site or page, and creating links from sites with non-relevant content. While this type of SEO is aimed at giving immediate results, there is a chance of your website getting blocked either temporarily or permanently by the search engines.
There's also a third type of SEO known as the ‘Grey Hat’, which is not as manipulative as the ‘Black Hat’ or as transparent as the ‘White Hat’. This type of SEO aims at winning higher page ranks but not intended to trick the search engine algorithms. ‘Grey Hat’ SEO includes techniques such as creating backlinks to your website by means of guest blogs, scholarships etc., which might not be directly relevant to the products or services you provide. 'Grey Hat' SEO is more of a brand-building practice.
Responsive Website
Responsiveness of your website is yet another factor that affects the rank of your website in search results.
A recent study by StatCounter shows that mobile and tablet devices accounted for 52.75% of internet usage worldwide in December, 2018 compared to 47.15% by desktops. And this tells you the importance of having a responsive website for your business, which would provide a better user experience to your audience irrespective of the device used to access your website.
Page Loading Speed
Whether the pages of your website loads fast or not is another factor that determines the user experience of your website. The faster it loads, the happier the customers, which in turn means better ROI.
According to Google/SOASTA Research, 2017, as your page load time goes from three seconds to 10 seconds on a mobile device, the probability of bounce increases from 32% to 123%.
This data is good enough for you to realise how much the page loading speed of your website could potentially affect your business. Just like keywords, it is important to optimize the graphical and image elements on your page, as bigger the size of these elements, the slower would be the page loading speed.
On-page Optimization
On-page optimization is what search engines directly find on your website like keywords, responsiveness, content etc. but it also includes other factors like title tag, SEO-friendly URL, and image alt text.
A title tag is an HTML element that defines the title of a page, which gets listed on search engine results pages (SERPs) as the clickable headline for a given result. This is crucial for usability, SEO, and social sharing. The title tag of a page is expected to be a precise description of a page's content.
Besides, you need to have SEO-friendly URLs for your webpages. The URL structure can prove to be determinable when it comes to tracking as well as sharing. It’s always preferable to have a short, descriptive and logical URLs for your webpages that are relevant to the content of the pages.
The ‘image alt text’ is the descriptions you give for the images on your page. This also needs to be short, and relevant. It ideally should be like describing the image to a blind person.
Off-page Optimization
Off-page SEO is a set of activities that doesn’t happen immediately on your website but helps search engines to determine how the world perceive your website.
Link-building, SMO, and social bookmarking are the three major off-page activities.
Link-building is a process of creating back-links to your website from other sites and blogs, and SMO refers to Social Media Optimization.
A website with good and relevant content and a good user experience is likely to attract references (links) from other websites; and also find mentions on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter etc. It is also more likely to be bookmarked and shared among like-minded users.
What makes Spericorn a trusted SEO company?
Spericorn has years of experience in offering SEO services for our valuable clients. We understand that your brand is valuable, and we take every effort in good faith to provide you with the right SEO strategy to give visibility to your brand.
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