What you need to know about optimization
Brandon Leibowitz, 11 September 2022
Search engine optimization isn't going anywhere, and it's not going to get easier. More and more brands are trying to do SE Optimization. There are shifts and paradigm shifts in what Google focuses on from year to year which means a lot of people will have to adapt their SEO strategy or face the consequences in the SERPs like not showing up for their target keywords. This means seo webinars are becoming increasingly common. Below we cover some of the key points you should be aware of in 2022.
1. What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization is the practice of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's unpaid results - often referred to as "natural," "organic," or "earned" results - which are typically displayed on SERPs (search engine result pages). This includes the process of promoting a website in order to drive traffic to it.
2. How Google Ranks Website Content
Google uses a few different factors to determine how well a webpage or website ranks on its search engine. These include technical factors like whether the site is responsive (mobile friendly), the quality of the website content and the number of quality backlinks (external sites linking back to your webpage).
Technical Factors
The first factor is technical. Google looks at the speed of your site's loading time, which is called "Page Speed." It also looks at how responsive or mobile-friendly your site is (called "Mobile-Friendly"). If your website is not optimized for a mobile device, which is now becoming the device of choice for online search, you'll get dinged by Google - and that can hurt your rankings.
Great Website Content
The second factor is great content. Google wants to make sure that people are getting good information when they search for something - so if there are spelling mistakes or grammar errors on your website, it's going to hurt your ranking. They also want to make sure that the content isn't spammy or low-quality; if it is, you'll get dinged by Google.
Quality Backlinks
Thirdly, Google looks at backlinks - or other websites linking back to yours - to figure out how important your site is in terms of ranking on their search engine. If enough other sites have linked back to your website and recognized its value as a resource or source of information for their readers/viewers/visitors etc., then that will boost your search ranking.
3. How to Build an SEO Strategy
To build an SE Optimization strategy, you need to understand what's happening in the industry you're targeting, what your competitors are doing, and how they're doing it. You'll also need to know who your target audience is and where they hang out online. This will help you understand what kind of content they want so that you can create great content for them!
4. How to Measure SEO
You can measure search engine optimization by tracking your rankings over time so that you know when things have changed (if they have), and whether or not those changes are due to your efforts or some other factor like seasonal trends or other websites going down temporarily while they update their own systems.
5. Local and Black Hat SEO
Local and black hat are two different types of search engine optimization.
Local SEO is the practice of optimizing a website to rank higher in local search results, which means it's designed to help businesses show up more prominently on Google when someone searches for something in their area.
Black Hat SEO refers to the use of techniques that violate Google's guidelines for good optimization - in other words, it's about getting your site to rank higher than it should by using methods that aren't above board. If Google catches you doing this -or suspects that you're doing this - then they'll penalize your site by dropping its ranking or even removing it from their index altogether.
6. Bottomline
There is a lot of myth and misinformation around the topic of search engine optimization. In reality, it is very difficult to rank highly in Google without proper on-site optimization. Some of the best tips many will recommend are: keep your site updated with fresh and relevant content, be sure to not have duplicate pages on your website, and do not add too many ads to your site as it will lower your ranking among other things.
Of course, there are MANY more tips that could be listed but this should give you an idea of what you absolutely must do when it comes to optimizing your website for search engines.
Author Bio
Brandon Leibowitz is the founder of SEO Optimizers, a Digital Marketing Agency in Los Angeles, California. He is also the founder of Bosmol.com, a social media news blog. He has been involved with search engine optimization and internet marketing since 2007.