In this article, we are going to learn the fundamental principles of Search Engine Optimization(SEO) like the basics of SEO and why is it important and we also debunk some of the biggest myths of SEO.
Fundamental Principles Of Search Engine Optimization(SEO)
What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization and is the practice of increasing the quality and quantity of traffic to your website through organic search engine results. Organic traffic is the web traffic that you do not pay for.
Let’s see the example from Google.
When I searched for yoga mat in Google, you will see the sponsored results at the top and then we have the organic listings from e-commerce sites.
So, when you optimize a website correctly for SEO, you are going to appear in that organic section.
Why is SEO Important?
SEO is super important for numerous reasons.
If we check the above example again, Let’s say you are a yoga mat seller and when someone searches for a yoga mat in Google, and your website doesn’t show up in the results of Google, it will hamper your business.
While paid advertising, social media, and other online platforms generate traffic to websites, the majority of the traffic is driven by search engines.
Moreover, if your website appears in the search results without any paid promotions, this will build trust in your website which drives more clicks and more sales.
Debunking SEO Myths
We have seen a lot of people saying that “SEO doesn’t work”, “Links are dead” etc. Here, we are going to debunk some of the biggest myths one by one.
1. Content is King
You might have seen people saying content is all we need or content is king which is true but the content just isn’t enough. We also need links or you can say backlinks which have significant importance in the page rankings.
2. Page Speed isn’t that Important
This is completely false. Page speed is becoming more and more important every single year. One of the biggest reasons why page speed is important is it all comes down to the user experience. Google’s main job is to provide the best results for what the person searched for.
For example, Let’s say you are searching to buy something on Google and you click on a website, and it takes forever to load, will you keep on waiting or you just go back and look for another website? So, based on the user actions, Google will rank down the websites whose performance is slow.
3. Links are Dead
This is one of the most common myths people have nowadays the backlinks or links don’t work anymore. Google still gives significant importance to the backlinks of a website while ranking it in search results.
4. Higher Keyword Density Helps You Rank
This might have worked 10 years ago. Now, the Google algorithm has become so mature that it will understand the keywords in the article if they are forcefully stuffed. So, if you do keyword stuffing in your article, this is not going to work now.
5. Buying Google Ads helps increase Organic Traffic
This is absolutely false. Buying traffic from Google is not going to give you any increase in your organic search listings.
6. More Pages Help Website Rank Better
This is not true. Adding more pages to the website will not help get higher rankings on Google. When it comes to SEO, the main thing we need to focus on is quality over quantity. Publishing less high-quality pages is way better than publishing more low-quality pages. So, when it comes to SEO, we need to focus on quality.
Types of SEOs
There are two types of SEOs we need to focus on when we are creating a SEO campaign.
- On-page SEO
- Off-page SEO
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO refers to any change we make on a website to improve its visibility. In on-page SEO, we would be updating the title tag, changing the H1 tag, and editing the meta description of a page, etc. These are all part of the on-page optimizations of a website for more visibility.
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO refers to any change we make off the website to improve its visibility. In off-page SEO, we would be building links to the website, getting the website listed on external directories, optimizing social media profiles, etc. These all come under off-page optimizations.