If you are planning to own a website, or planning to open your own ecommerce store, there’s no doubt that you’ll have to pay your respects to SEO in order for you to get more conversions, more traffic and a higher ranking. But truth is, most people who are trying to get into the online business world don’t know a single thing about SEO. Therefore, in this article, you will be learning about the basics of SEO; the things that need to come to your mind when you hear the word SEO. So without further ado, here we go:
WHAT IS SEO?
Search engine optimization, popularly known as SEO, is the process of optimizing a web page or a website in order to increase its ranking, or its visibility, on the results page of a search engine (also known as SERP’s, that is, search engine result pages). Now, the ranking or visibility is increased in the organic results or natural results of the search engine, hence the term Organic SEO. As a client, any professional SEO, SEM company that wants to work for you will recommend this as part of their on-line marketing strategy. This part deals with Off-page and On-page aspects of SEO, which are going to be explained below. SEO -acronym for search engine optimization- works with actual keywords or search terms that are typed or pasted into the engine’s search box, and how the search results are displayed. Depending on the requirements of a client, a SEO company can offer SEO services as a separate service or as part of a complete on-line marketing plan.
WHAT IS ON-PAGE OPTIMIZATION
Just as the phrase suggests, On Page Optimization is the adjustment of your webpage or website in order to make it optimized in the best possible way so that search engines can easily gain access to it through the use of some particular search terms or keywords without any hassle. It is also used to take off any factor or parameter that may hinder a search engine from gaining access to the webpage or website. This is achieved by optimizing the content, the HTML and other coding functions as per the keywords related to the business of your website or webpage. This optimization enables search bots or spiders to find the keywords, relevant to the search term a visitor enters in the search engine’s box. Therefore, no matter what you do or steps you take in your on-line marketing strategy and SEO, you will not get the desired results if your webpage or website is not correctly optimized according to the search engine’s guidelines. All in all, on page optimization deals with everything that is directly related to your website.
WHAT IS OFF PAGE OPTIMIZATION?
This is the direct opposite of on page optimization. Off page optimization deals with everything that will be done outside your website, and the optimization of the external parameters that has an effect on how your website will be located on the internet. It involves the placement of your website on external sources, making your website accessible from different locations on the net. Your website will gain popularity when placed on relevant and reliable resources. It will also make it easy for search engines to relate your website to relevant search terms, thereby giving you a higher rank on search engine rankings. There are a lot of ways through which you can place your website on the internet, including:
- Directory submission
- Link building
- Article submission
- Article writing
- Blogging
- Press releases
There are many more ways to put your website on the internet but these are the vital ones and they need to be exercised with great care as they can either make your website very popular or break the popularity of your website.
WHAT IS SEM
A lot of people think that SEM (Search Engine Marketing) and SEO are the same thing since both are paid services offered by internet marketing companies. Here’s the definition; While SEO deals with the optimization of your website for relevant keywords in order to allow search engines to locate it, SEM deals with promoting your website via paid aspects like Adwords, advertising, paid placement in results, etc. To make it easier, we can say SEO is advertising your website in the free classified sections of a newspaper while SEM is advertising your website in the paid section but with your advert being placed on top of every other adverts.
In order to get the best of both worlds, you need to hire the service of a competent and experienced internet marketing company as they will know the right type of both strategies that will suit your website and also, your budget.