SEO is a buzzword in the world of the world wide web and the related industries. SEO is an abbreviation, and its elaborated form is Search Engine Optimization. This is like a book of rules or code of conduct for the people who wish to put their Websites at the top of the search results.
This is like some common rules tell us to design our websites and write our content following some specifications set out by the search engines. In the present world, Google is the most commonly used search engine at the present time.
Hence, we can say SEO is a set of rules set out by Google for us to follow if we want to see our page at the top of the ranking. SEO significantly organizes content and the website to improve the quality to improve the traffic to our websites.
Why SEO is important
SEO is a very complex thing. So, we will try to simplify things a little for our readers. There are three things you need to know about SEO to get an idea of how things work. When we use our search engine, we get our search results based on the keywords we put in.
The keywords are called queries. The first page we see after we have hit the search button of the search engine is called SERP or search engine results page. Now, let us see why SEO is so important.
1. Organic Search Results:
When we make a query, we will see a few results coming at the top with the keyword ‘Ad’. These are pay-per-click ads or PPC. These will occupy the top of our SERPs. These are paid. However, the rest of the results are unpaid, and usually, the search engine decides which one will come at the top based on the relevance to the search queries.
This is very important for you. These results are not paid. Therefore, the ranking is purely based on how much a page has followed the rules set by the search engine.
The search engine algorithm will purely rank the best and the most relevant page at the top based on the merits of the website. You can never pay for the best rank in an organic search result. You will have to Optimize your website for the Search Engine.
2. Organic Traffic Quality:
The second thing we need to know is this. Without the knowledge of this, we will not be able to understand why SEO is important. For example, You have a stall in a market. You sell an apple, and so, you have made a picture of a nice-looking apple on the signboard, which accidentally looks almost like the Apple logo of the Apple company.
Now, many of the people coming to the market for the Apple iPhone will also have an interest in your signboard because they are also looking for the Apple! However, when they come to your stall, they will see that you are actually selling the fruit but not the iPhone. Therefore, most of them will not stay and talk to you to make a purchase.
You did get a lot of traffic to your shop, but none of them really made any purchase. This is what we call ‘traffic quality.’ If there is no purchase, the quality of traffic is bad. On the other hand, if the people come to your place to actually talk to you and make purchases, you can call it quality traffic.
Now, if we are selling something online, we need to make sure that our traffic is of ‘good’ quality. Heavy traffic without any purchase will never work for our business. This is where SEO comes in handy. We want the people who actually are interested to buy something we ‘sell’ from our online store.
3. Organic Traffic Quantity:
Now, that you sell apples, you not only want Quality traffic but also want that quality traffic in a large quantity. This is how you and your business can survive. You can do this by making your online store come to the top of the SERP in an organic search result.
People tend to click the first five to six links that come out in SERP. If your page is not among them, then you will not get any good quantity of that quality traffic. This is also where SEO comes into action. If you follow the SEO guidance and make your website content the most relevant to the queries made by people, you will get that desired quantity of good quality traffic.
How Does SEO Work
If you have ever done some programming in Python, you may have come across a type of coding technique that lets you filter the desired keywords from a specific webpage and store the words on a file.
Search engines like Google use the same kind of technique as web crawlers. Web crawler’s algorithm searches for specific signs, code fragments, texts, and text formats like headings, titles, etc.
This way, it crawls all of the links and pages within the website to understand the subject matter of the website and how everything related to this website connects or relates to other websites within a huge database. This database is known as Index.
Now, users worldwide will input keywords as queries into the search engine, and this search engine will use its algorithm to find out the most relevant search results from its index. These are called organic search results. These results can include part of a more extensive text, another link, a whole document, international or local businesses, etc.
The algorithm we have talked about is an ever-evolving one. The programmers are always trying their best to add more specifications in their crawlers and algorithms, more codes to more pinpoint the search results.
Now, we put a keyword, bringing out audio, video, text, pictures, and even map results. Amazing, isn’t it!! Through machine learning, search engines are becoming more intelligent, and that is why SEO is also improving day by day. Thus, if we do not follow SEO guidance, we will not be able to get the quantity and quality of traffic we expect for our online business.