SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” SEO affects every website on the internet and it is crucial that anyone who owns a website should understand it. It can be a bit difficult to get a concise definition of SEO, so we are going to provide one and explain why it matters for your website.
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What is SEO?
Have you ever been Googling something and wondered why certain websites were at the top of the Google results page and why some sites are near the bottom? Well, the answer is at least partially related to SEO. A site’s SEO determines just how well it will rank on Google – i.e. how high up the link will show on the results page for a specific search term.
SEO is a broad term that encompasses all the various techniques that a site can use to increase its ranking on Google (or any other search engine, like Bing or Yahoo). For example, SEO can refer to the process of putting keywords
on your site, it can also refer to the process of getting things called “backlinks” for your site. It can also encompass things like making your site mobile friendly (more and more people are browsing the web through their mobile phones, so search engines give extra weight to sites that are mobile friendly).
So, to summarize, SEO is essentially a very broad and important term that encompasses all the actions you can take to make your site rank better on search engines like Google. You can implement many of these tactics yourself, or you can hire SEO experts to work on it for you.
Getting on the First Page of Google Search Results
Every person who runs a website or blog wants to get their website or blog on the front page of Google. It results in more people visiting the website, which can result in more sales or more money made from ads and products. But talking about getting on the front page of Google is a whole lot easier than actually doing it!
There are some strategies for getting on the front page of Google, but it does require a good deal of effort and a good amount of planning – plus some time and patience for it to all come to fruition. In this article, we will explain some of the strategies you can use to get your site on the first page of Google.
Update Your Site Regularly with Quality Content
Google heavily punishes sites that post low-effort, mass- produced content and sites that do not post at all. Thus, one important thing to keep in mind if you want to get your
site to the front page of Google is that you need to regularly update your site with new, quality content.
You don’t necessarily need to post once a day – some successful bloggers may only post once per month. However, their posts are often long, high quality, and they have a bank of previous content to fill their sites with. If you’re new, you may need to work on getting a good number of articles or blog posts up on your sites before you reduce your posting frequency.
You also need to make sure that the content is high-quality. You can’t just copy and paste things you find elsewhere (that would be a copyright infringement), nor should you hire cheap, bad writers just for the sake of churning out articles – you need to actually put effort into creating content.
Use Keywords
One of the best methods for getting your website on the first page of Google is to target keywords. Just targeting keywords is no guarantee that you will get your site onto the front page. But, if you pick the right keywords and if you make sure that you use good content to support those keywords, then you should see your site appear on the front page of Google for keywords that don’t necessarily have a lot of competition already. And the more your site climbs in the rankings, the easier it’ll be to rank higher for even the high competition keywords (use keyword research tools to find which keywords to target).
Use Backlinks
Another important strategy for getting your site to the front page of Google is to use backlinks. For those who do not know, backlinks are links to a website that are found on other sites. So, when someone tweets a link to a website, that link is considered a backlink. The more backlinks a site has, the more weight Google will give it in its’ rankings.
The reason backlinks work is that Google thinks of backlinks as essentially being votes of confidence. If people are continually posting links to a site all over the internet, then clearly that site must be good at whatever it does. However, a backlink from a spammy site won’t make much difference, so there’s no point spamming your links all over the web!
Why Does SEO Ranking Matter for Your Website?
The reason why SEO is so important for websites is that better SEO translates into more traffic, which can translate into more sales, more email list subscribers, more ads clicked, etc. SEO has a greater importance for smaller sites, such as those run by small businesses. The reason for this is that they probably don’t have as much of a budget as bigger sites, and traffic from search engines is completely free.
This is not to say that bigger sites do not need SEO, but it is less important for them. No matter what Amazon does, it will always be near the top of Google due to its sheer size and the number of people that visit it daily. Small sites cannot rely on their size to get them ranked, they need to use SEO to make sure that people can actually find their site on Google.
