What is SEO in digital marketing?
SEO in digital marketing involves a range of techniques designed to boost a website’s position in search engine results. Often regarded as a component of internet or web marketing, the main goal of SEO is to achieve higher search engine rankings, thereby attracting a larger audience.
SEO is a fundamental component of digital marketing. Its impact is far-reaching, influencing how businesses strategize their online presence and connect to their users.
What are the key Components of Search Engine Optimisation?
What are the key Components of SEO in digital marketing?
SEO is a multifaceted process that encompasses various elements, working together to achieve its objectives. These components include…
Keywords
The core of SEO. They represent the terms or phrases users type into search engines to seek information. Effective keyword research involves identifying relevant keywords tailored to your business, products, or services.
On-Page Optimisation
On-page SEO focuses on optimising elements directly on your website. This includes optimising meta titles and descriptions, utilising header tags, crafting high-quality content, and ensuring a seamless user experience. The aim is to provide valuable and engaging content that aligns with user search intent.
Off-Page Optimisation
Off-page SEO concentrates on factors external to your website that influence its ranking. This involves acquiring high-quality backlinks from reputable websites, cultivating social media engagement, and generating positive online mentions. Off-page efforts bolster your website’s authority and credibility.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO addresses the backend aspects of your website, ensuring that search engines can effectively crawl and index your content. This involves optimising website speed, ensuring mobile responsiveness, rectifying crawl errors, and creating a sitemap.
Content Quality
High-quality content is a non-negotiable aspect of SEO. Search engines prioritise content that is relevant, informative, and engaging. Regularly updating and expanding your content contributes to your website’s authority and ranking improvement.
How does Google order and rank search results?
Google has a collection of algorithms such as Hummingbird, Panda and RankBrain that are responsible for deciding how to order and rank search engine results.
The machine-learning based algorithm RankBrain builds off Hummingbird and works by:
- If RankBrain sees a word or phrase it isn’t familiar with, it uses artificial intelligence to understand it better by connecting it to similar search queries through word vectors – in other words, understand ‘search intent’.
- It allows Google to understand these queries by converting keywords into known topics and concepts, meaning it can provide better search engine results – even when queries are unusual.
- Rather than attempting to be the best keyword optimized result, RankBrain rewards websites that provide user satisfaction (by measuring it) and return the result that the user expects.
For ranking, you should also consider Google’s EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) framework which may not be a ranking factor but it’s a component of its Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines.
How To Optimize Your Website for Search
Knowing that SEO in digital marketing is important to your online marketing efforts is one thing. Building an effective plan is another. Here are some fundamental strategic ways that you can optimize your website for search.
1. Properly Use Keywords
By now, you know that you should have keywords and use them on your web pages. But it’s important to know where to put them so that you can maximize the juice you get from the search engines for your efforts.
The keyword should appear in the title tag at least once. This is what readers see when your article pops onto the search engine’s results. You also want the keyword to be in your URL. This tells the search engine what your page is about. Include the keyword in the first 100 words of content. Some experts and tools such as Yoast prefer you to use the keyword in the first sentence. Either way, get to the point to tell readers what your article is about—the keyword.
Those are three key places to have the keyword. You’ll also want to use it in the text throughout but try not to overuse it as that can be considered keyword stuffing. A best practice would be to include it five to seven times per thousand words.
2. Avoid Pogo-Sticking With Relevant Content
Pogosticking is when users come to your site and bounce off it quickly. Search engines know how long users stay on a site and give more credibility to those that keep readers on longer. It’s more than just getting a click to your site that is important—you want to keep people on it.
If someone pogo-sticks on your site, that means they didn’t find the answer they were looking for and they return to the search results to find a better resource. When this happens frequently to your site, search engines will push you down in the SERP rankings.
So how do you prevent pogo-sticking? You write content that meets the needs of the keywords. Don’t beat around the bush and instead get to the point so that readers know you have relevant content and want to read more to find the answers they are looking for. For instance, you can make the content easy to read and more visually appealing by using bullet lists and headers to break up long passages of text.
3. Use Long-Tail Keywords To Enhance Ranking
Long-tail keywords take the keyword and expand it with a tail word or phrase. These keywords go a step further in search to specify exactly what users read. You can get a sense of long-tail keywords by typing in the keyword into the search query and seeing what other possible keywords populate in a drop-down list.
Incorporate long-tail keywords into the content to get better search results. By creating content that addresses long-tail keywords, you can ensure you are getting the specifics down that the reader wants to know about.
4. Eliminate Non-Performing Pages
Non-performing pages are often referred to as zombie pages, which simply exist but get no traffic. They don’t help your site ranking because they are deemed to not have useful content on them, so it’s ideal to get rid of them. This, in turn, will re-index your site on the search engine and help the search engine see that all of your content is relevant and helpful.
Prune your site of those that aren’t doing anything for you. Search engines prefer a solid page of content that is relevant over many smaller pieces of content it can’t categorize and deem useful.
Conclusion
SEO in digital marketing has become an extremely important component for businesses of all sizes. By understanding and implementing effective SEO strategies, you can improve your website’s visibility, attract more targeted traffic, and drive better results for your business.
Remember, SEO in digital marketing is an ongoing process that requires patience, dedication, and a commitment to creating high-quality, relevant content that caters to your target audience’s needs.
By consistently following best practices, staying up-to-date with the latest trends and algorithm updates, and regularly monitoring your website’s performance, you can use the power of SEO in digital marketing to achieve long-term success in the competitive world of digital marketing.