What is SEO?

So what exactly is SEO?

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process by which your web site is optimized to perform better on the search engine ranking pages (SERPS), image search, local search, industry specific sites, search directories, information sites and others.

Let us break up this explanation further to provide a more detailed explanation
The SEO process typically includes but may not be limited to the below-mentioned:

On- page optimization:

Optimizing a web site involves, design optimization, researching relevant Keywords, content optimization, writing relevant titles, and description meta tags, working on HTML codes, image optimization, and other elements of a web page.

Off- page optimization:

This includes suggesting your web site to industry specific sites, local search, video search, and acquiring natural back links.

These are in-depth processes and some of these processes  are time taking and require continuous work. SEO is a continuous and ongoing process. Search Engine Optimizers need to work with web site owners to ensure that they are on the same page. They should review the performance of the website on a regular basis.

SEO is one of the key ingredients of Internet marketing. It is one of the oldest, natural (un- paid), and evolving ways by which Internet marketers leverage web sites for optimum performance on search engines.

The important and critical thing to remember is relevance. Webmasters should ensure that their website subscribes to the best practices for SEO. The objective of implementing SEO is to get relevant visitors to your web site. If your target keywords are completely different from what your web site is all about, you will not be able to benefit from SEO. Visitors will click on your URL expecting to find content or information relevant to what you are saying in your title and description and if there is a dichotomy in that, you will lose visitors and their trust as well.

SEO therefore is focused on providing the best user experience by optimizing sites for users and search engines. Aligning a web site’s objective with each of the online promotional activities, whether it is on-page SEO optimization or Off-page SEO optimization, is the key to achieving success by implementing SEO.

There was a time when writing titles and descriptions that included relevant keywords would ensure your web site a decent placement in search engines. Search engine have evolved much more now. Their algorithms are getting better and better to enable them to show the most relevant search results to the visitors. SEO has also evolved to ensure that websites are delivering what they are promising.

That does not mean that there aren’t any sites who try to use different methods to get ranking. But such cases are going down, and this usually happens for low competitive keywords.

I faced a similar situation recently. A few days back I was searching for the availability of a specific electric car near my location. I searched for the “<name of the electric car>+ <dealers> in <location>”

I found a lot of sites that have used that specific car name in their meta tags but there is no information about that in their site. It was kind of irritating because the title and descriptions were written in such a way that anyone seeing that would feel as if clicking on the URL would provide them the information but to my dismay, I found a page with a lot of car names except what I was looking for! It did leave a bad taste, and I think I may not want to visit that site anymore. I feel that the site does not really care much for the visitor’s experience.

Overtime this kind of practice may damage a web site’s good will. Providing your visitors more than what they expect is wonderful, if not, at least ensure that you meet your visitor’s expectations. In this case, the webmaster created perfectly attractive titles and descriptions but failed to provide the content. Imagine, if the web site displayed the relevant content as well, what a win-win situation it would be for the web site!

SEO best practices are all about that. Not only will SEO help you in creating and optimizing a better performing site, it will also help provide a better user experience.

I hope my attempt to explain SEO will help some of you who want to know what SEO is and what it entails.