What Is SEO and How It Works: Part I

The secret’s out! People are using search engines to find the information they’re looking for! Okay, it’s no secret, but do you really know how many search queries are made?

According to What Is SEO: The Introductory Guide to SEO in 2017 by Ryte & HubSpot, “Each year more than 2.8 trillion search queries are made on Google alone. This means that Google answers more than 88,700 searches worldwide per second.”

As you can see, the numbers say it all. The longer your website goes without a proper SEO strategy and strong analytical data to see what is working and what needs to be adjusted, the more likely you are to miss hundreds or even thousands of potential customers. The loss of this potential revenue can’t be ignored, but where do you start?

That’s where we come in! We will provide you with the most detailed information about SEO so that you can create an SEO strategy like a pro! We will describe what SEO is, what elements affect your website SEO and how it all works together. However, to keep you from losing interest or falling asleep while reading all of this information, we decided to break this article into two parts. In today’s article, Part I introduces the basics about SEO and what it involves. After that, we will dissect your website into pieces and discuss how these elements affect your On-Page SEO or visual elements of your SEO.

This will prepare us for next week’s article, “What is SEO and How it Works: Part II”, which will discuss Link Building or Off-Page SEO and how your entire SEO strategy works to “rank” your website in 2019.

SeeDreams Tip: If you are brand new to SEO we recommend reading both Part I & Part II from top to bottom. Both contain large amounts of detailed information with great visual examples to help accelerate your understanding of SEO and how it works. If you already understand SEO and how it works, we still encourage you to skim through both articles for updated SEO information for 2019.

What Is SEO?

We are hearing more and more how important SEO is for our websites, but what is SEO? Let’s go over some definitions to clear any confusion you may have about SEO.

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)-The branch of SEM (Search Engine Marketing) that focuses on “organic” or free search results and rankings in search engines. SEO involves constant research and adjusting, both on and off your website, to make sure the correct information is getting to the right target audience at the proper time. Remember: the primary goal is to attract, engage and inform your target personas and your SEO strategy is the main backbone for getting this done.

• Search Engine Marketing (SEM)-Search Engine Marketing is a digital marketing strategy that involves all website exposure and traffic (both organic and paid) in search engines that has two subcategories: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Advertising (SEA). By utilizing a well-structured and monitored SEM campaign your company website can not only receive increased exposure, but also attract customers specifically looking for your products or services making these website visits even more valuable.

• Search Engine Advertising (SEA)-The branch of SEM that involves paying for advertising slots on search engines based on a selection of keywords. These keywords are charged on a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) basis, which means that every time your website is “Clicked” for a particular keyword you are charged, so plan a proper budget.

So, now that we have a better understanding of what SEO is and what its focus is, we can look at the individual elements that are involved with On-Page SEO. These elements affect your website in different ways, each of them being very important in explaining what your website is all about. In this section we will look at the visual elements of your website (On-Page SEO) and go into detail about what they are, where they appear and how to use them in your SEO strategy. Time to look at your website from a different point of view!

The SEO Elements of Your Website

Ever wonder how search engines “see” your website and know when to “show” it to searchers? Search engines have a “bot” or “crawler” that “reads” your website code for every page and then indexes each of these pages. After your pages are indexed, search engines then apply an algorithm that scores your web pages for organic search rankings. There are hundreds of factors that go into “ranking” your website in search engines. However, even as search engines always try to improve their algorithms to crawl deeper to make even more precise decisions of what websites are the most relevant and authoritative, they still need some help. That’s where SEO comes in! By implementing an SEO strategy throughout your website both on-page and off-page, you provide the vital information to the crawler that gives your website the authority and relevance it needs to rank for specific keywords.

On-Page SEO

The first pieces of SEO that we will discuss are the On-Page SEO elements. These are all visual elements that are incorporated into your website that a searcher or visitor will see throughout the buyer’s journey and informational elements the crawlers use to understand everything about your web pages.

SeeDreams Tip: It helps quite a bit to have a basic understanding of HTML code to fully understand how On-Page SEO works. However, for those of you that don’t know about HTML code, we will provide visual examples for you so you can begin to understand this part of your SEO.

One of the easiest ways to understand how your On-Page SEO is structured and organized is to look at it like a newspaper. The way that each newspaper page is structured and organized is the same way that your On-Page SEO is structured. Always keep this model in mind while you develop your SEO strategy and it will save you time and frustration in the long run. Now, let’s look at these elements in more detail.

• Custom & Unique URLs-One of the first places you can look to help your on-page SEO are your URLs. These are the web addresses that show in the browsers address bar and can be utilized as part of your keyword strategy. With keywords strategically used in these custom URLs, you are able to present your website to the specific users that are searching for a very distinct set of keywords. If you have an ecommerce website, it’s a great idea to customize each product URL instead of having a URL that is just an item number. By customizing the URLs for each page of your website, you provide both the user and the crawler a solid understanding of what kind of content will be on each page. This is good step to gain the trust of the user and crawlers alike, take advantage!

• Page Titles-Page titles are very important for your on-page SEO because they tell both the user and the crawler what to expect from each individual page. Using our newspaper example, these would be the section titles for each part of the newspaper (ex: Sports, Business, Classifieds, etc.) These titles are also important because they are the clickable links that appear in the search engines that users click to get to your website. Without proper keywords and/or descriptions, users won’t see and/or not know what your web page is about. Make sure each page on your website has a unique and detailed page title that attracts your target audience and gives them a solid idea of what to expect from your web page.

SeeDreams Tip: USE CAUTION when deciding whether to change page titles or not. If pages of your website are already ranking, changing your page titles can affect your ranking, both positive and negative. However, if your bounce rate is high, adjusting your page title to better describe what the page is about will benefit both SEO and the user experience.

• Meta Descriptions-Meta descriptions work in conjunction with your page titles to give more specific and descriptive details about the web page.Meta descriptions don’t have a direct affect on your SEO ranking, however the keywords that are used for the search are bolded on the search engine results page (SERP) to highlight to the user that your web page contains information they are looking for.You have limited character space, so be as specific as possible and incorporate your keywords appropriately.

• Headings-Headings are the elements on your web pages that lead your visitors through the buyer’s journey by telling the user what each section of the page is about. Headings also create a hierarchy system for your web pages as follows: H1 (most important, highest priority), H2, H3 (least important, lower priority) and so on, but we recommend not to go lower than H3s. This hierarchy structure on the page helps the crawler understand what your web pages are about and what the most important points are for each page. Going back to our newspaper example, let’s look at how the headings are organized. You have a main headline story at the top of the page (H1 Heading), followed by smaller headlines (H2 and H3 Headings) that are also related to the main section (Page Title) and the headline story (H1 Heading). All of your headings should relate and support the keywords and descriptions of each page title to give each page individual relevance and authority for every topic of your website.

SeeDreams Tip: ONLY USE ONE H1 HEADING PER PAGE. This is the main topic heading of each page and should let both the user and the crawler know exactly what the page is about. Use multiple H2s and H3s to help support your H1 heading if necessary and don’t forget your keywords.

• High Quality Content-The content of each page of your website is the detailed support for your page title and the headings throughout your web pages. This includes your written text, images and videos that you use to describe or display your products or services. As the search engine algorithms keep changing to crawl deeper into websites, the quality of your page content is becoming more important. Crawlers are designed to read your website as close to a human as possible and are now using the quality of your content as part of your ranking score, so always keep in mind as you develop your content for each web page to keep the content unique and informative. Returning to our newspaper article, the photos and the article itself are the content of the newspaper. They all relate to each heading and are put under the correct sections. This is how you want to structure your web pages to make it quick and easy to understand the information. The difference is that you must develop content for customers for every stage of the buyer’s journey to make it the best and most engaging, so don’t forget to reference your customer personas constantly!

• Optimized Images-As you begin to add images to your website you will start to add load time to your website because of their size, so make sure that these elements are optimized as well. You want to provide the content your customers are looking for, but you don’t want to sacrifice your page load speed, as this counts towards your ranking score also. By resizing and compressing these elements, you are able to show off your products or services and still keep your page load speed fast. After resizing and compressing your images, make sure the file names are detailed and descriptive and add Alt Tags to each image. These Alt Tags provide the crawler with the proper information to understand what the image is and provides a second opportunity of your content showing in the image search results on the SERP. Don’t forget to optimize your images and you will give your website the best opportunities for exposure and engagement from your target audience!

• Keep Your Website Lookin’ Good-Now that you’ve structured your website properly, implemented your keywords, added great high quality content and optimized all your images, you’re done right? Nope! Now it’s time to keep your website looking pristine and updated. Not only is our digital world changing at light speed, but so are the trends and expectations of our target audiences. By keeping informed of what your customers are looking for next, you are able to anticipate changes before your competition, giving you the edge. By listening to your customers and accommodating their needs, you create an even more engaging experience on your website. This added engagement is now considered as part of your ranking score which is part of the new algorithm released by Google. Remember: Your website is the digital representation of your business that is accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year and users judge your company based on your website looks alone. Make the proper first impression every time!

Excellent! You have made it to the end of Part I! I hope you have a solid understanding of what SEO is and how On-Page SEO works now. Now you can confidently start your SEO strategy and know it’s on the right track. Remember: SEO is always changing. Research often and thoroughly to keep your SEO strategy ahead of your competition.

SeeDreams Tip: Focus your SEO strategy for your customers first and then the crawlers. At the end of the day, it’s your customers that you have to impress, attract and engage. Plus, crawlers are made to act more and more humanlike, so it just makes sense!

Check out next week’s article, “What is SEO and How it Works: Part II” to take the next step in your SEO strategy. We will be discussing backlinks, internal links, link building strategy and how SEO works in 2019, so come back by next week!

Resources

https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/what-is-seo/

https://ahrefs.com/blog/what-is-seo/

https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo