How Does SEO Affect My Website?

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a method which helps us to enhance the ranking of our websites in search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc., without paying for advertisements. When a person searches for a particular thing on the internet search engines, millions of results appear on the screen. Some of those search results are paid advertisements. The owners of the web pages and websites pay a certain amount to the search engine companies to get the top positions in the list or SERP (Search Engine Result Page). Others appear on the list based on their organic ranking. Those are not paid rankings; those are earned rankings based on the SEO. To rank a page in the SERP list, Google uses an algorithm which dictates search engine behavior by using two hundred different factors to position a site. However, not all the elements play a significant role in the preferred ranking, only a few of them help us to achieve our desired outcome. Some of the factors are described below.

Keywords:

Keywords are the fundamental elements in digital marketing. Keywords refer to the words which people use to search for a product online or want to see included in their search engines. Google Keyword Planner is a free tool that allows the users to choose suitable keywords for their business, which help to optimize a webpage or website. There are mainly three types of keywords: Generic, Broad match and Longtail. A website which includes all the three different types of keywords gets the chance to be on the top positions on internet ranking. Generic keywords are the general words which present a considerable quantity of untargeted traffic. These keywords are very much competitive at the same time. Broad match keywords supply an equal amount of traffic. These keywords are more like phrases, like "future growth in the hotel industry," which are pretty targeted to the search words of the people. Long tail keywords are like the titles or heading of an article, similar to the lines people write on the search bar while looking for something, " How to lose weight in thirty days".

Mobile Friendly:

In the modern era, Smartphones, both the clients and the service providers depend on the personalized version of the websites available on their gadgets. So, a site which does not load on smart devices or does not synchronize its contents for mobile viewing may distract customers and lose business. The font size, image quality, small screen readability, tabs and navigation keys, etc. are the other things which leave an impact on the customers who search on their mobile phones.

Header tags:

A website with various headings with hierarchical pattern helps to grab customer's attention by finding a premier position in the search result. The Header 1 should provide the title of the product or service while Header 2 and Header 3 provide short descriptions about it. A Meta description must be followed, which will be limited within 160 words. If a website includes useful keywords phrases in the Meta description and the headers too, chances of grabbing the top positions get increased. The page title must consist of the keyword phrases as Google analyzes the title first to find similarity with the desired search results.

Social Media:

Nowadays, millions of people are active on social media, and they prefer to share the contents they like on those social media. So, the more a product is shared, the more people will be reached. So a good website must provide information about their social media pages. The highest ranking pages in the search engines have the highest number of shares in Social Media.

Images:

Websites with good quality images which can be optimized for mobile viewing get the attention of the clients. Use of related keywords in the image description is also necessary. Search engines cannot read images, so the images must come with ALT attributes which help the search engines to understand the pictures.

URLs:

Search engines can focus better on URLs with one particular keyword instead of multiple ones. Hyphens must be used to separate words instead of underscores, as search engines read a phrase with stresses as a single word. A website with a static URL is helpful for the customers, as a static URL is easier to understand for human beings than a dynamic URL.

Latent Semantic Indexing:

A website with Latent Semantic Indexing draws more attention during the internet searches compared to the sites without this feature. Despite being a powerful tool to boost search results, not many websites are using it, which is a significant advantage for the website using it. It allows merely finding related keywords with the main keywords to present enhanced search results. For example, if a person types for "cheese" only, the search results show relates search suggestions, like "Mozzarella cheese," " Parmesan cheese," "cottage cheese," " cheese pasta" etc.

Appearance:

A website with dull content and with little or low keywords fails to attract the attention of the search engines as well as the customers. Websites with proper heading, short but detailed product description and updated themes earn even better reviews. Speed is also an essential factor for a website to take a position in the search result. Google prefers domains which are more than a year old. A website full of technical errors is also a big failure in the digital market.