Search Engine Optimization abbreviated as SEO is the practice of increasing both the quality and quantity of website traffic. It brings exposure to your brand, through non-paid “organic” search engine results.
There are two major ways to maximize SEO for your business:
- User intent
People search for things on the internet using search engines – Google is an example of such search engine platforms. They do it with the desired outcome in mind – in most cases to make enquiries or purchase a product. This is known as “user intent.” For SEO to work for your brand, your brand’s website content has to provide users with the content they desire in the format in which they desire it.
The common user intent types are informational, navigational, and transactional. You can understand your target customer’s intent by Googling keyword(s) he would probably search, and evaluating the current Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Also, by evaluating what content your top-ranking competitors are providing according to your user’s intent, you can determine how to make your content better.
- Search engine ranking
Search engines go through these three steps to find you and make you searchable.
- Crawling: Search engines scour the Internet for content, looking over content for each URL they find. Content varies from webpages to videos, images, PDFs, and so on.
- Indexing: Search engines store and organize your content found during the crawling process in a large database for users who make searches.
- Ranking: Search engines then provide the pieces of content that will best answer a searcher’s query in the order of most relevant to least relevant.
To be highly ranked means your site and its content is highly relevant to the searched query. SEO works for your business when you understand the people you are writing for, and how you can provide what they want. It requires that you know what words are being used, as well as the type of content they wish to consume so that it can be delivered in a way that search engines can find and understand.
Your business has ~20X more traffic opportunities with SEO than Pay-Per-Click (PPC). This is because advertisements only drive traffic when it is done, but your consistency in optimizing your site can lead to accumulated traffic.
This is how SEO works in making your business visible on the internet.
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