SEO – What is that?
Have you ever wondered how some companies always manage to appear on the first page of Google? Or how they always attract the right candidates with their job ads?
SEO and SEA can do just that for you – with the right know-how and tools, it’s possible to improve your website’s performance but it takes a lot of time and patience. First, let me explain what exactly these two terms mean: SEA stands for Search Engine Advertising, your company pays money to Google, per user click, and your site will be displayed as “sponsored content.”
SEO, on the other hand, is free and stands for Search Engine Optimization. Here, the best result is displayed based on the search intention which is organically searched. The goal is to increase the number of visitors on your website. But how can this be achieved? The answer is through on- and off page optimization!
Three pillars of SEO
The relevance of a website is determined by a specific algorithm, that Google determines. There are over 200 ranking factors, some of which are known, some others are not. SEO can be best explained with these three pillars: on- page, off page and social media optimization. On page SEO refers to all measures that can be taken directly within your website, such as optimizing your content or improving title tags and meta descriptions, as well as the technical backend of your website.
In my opinion, content marketing is key to improving your SEO performance!
Off page SEO, on the other hand, is all the actions that can be taken outside of your website, such as creating backlinks and recommendations from other websites. In recent years, social media has also become increasingly important for SEO rankings. Google has confirmed that followers and likes have an impact on their algorithm and thus should not be underestimated.
The goal of SEO
The goal of on- and off page optimization is to improve the content on your own website and to present yourself in the best possible light online. Especially Google wants to defend their title of the world’s best search engine and therefore cares a lot about the satisfaction of its users. SEO comes down to the right interaction of keywords, relevance and search result presentation. Keywords are especially important for SEO performances. They are the search words that are entered by users in Google. When creating content for your blog or website, keywords should be well researched and appear in headlines, texts, captions, image descriptions, title tags and meta descriptions.
The goal of Search Engine Optimization is to bring more quality visitors to your website. The better your site is filled with relevant content, the more you can convince search engines about your site. Therefore, it is important to analyze the search behavior of your potential customers, cover relevant topics and conduct keyword research within your industry.
How does this work exactly?
Search engines use so-called crawlers, that permanently search the Internet. They sort out all content according to a topic and put it in an index. If someone googles a certain keyword, the corresponding page will open up. The more relevant the page (or job ad) is to the search query, the better it is positioned. While there is no official formula for success on how to increase a website’s ranking, there are some important factors that have worked for many sites before.
These include 1) content; 2) technical design; 3) user signals; 3) backlinks; 4) and 5) mobile view.
Do we need SEO now for our marketing strategy?
Search engine optimization should be at least a concept that everyone in your marketing department has heard of before! Many of your customers will find your website through Google, which is why SEO is becoming more and more important in the digital marketing world. With SEO you can not only improve your online presence but also generate new leads. How to properly implement SEO and work with Google is not always straightforward and simply explained. However, sustainable success can be achieved if it is implemented as a long-term strategy. With valuable and regularly new content, the market value and thus the website of your company can be taken to the next level.
Read my latest blogpost to see how you can write an SEO compliant article.
