Search Engine Optimization or SEO is an online marketing discipline focused on increasing visibility, traffic and rankings of your website on search engines, through a variety of techniques. There are many aspects to SEO, from writing good engaging content, to possessing a sound technical knowledge of websites work, to knowing how to build links to a website.
Search Engine Optimisation is not just about creating websites that rank on page 1 number 1, it is also about creating websites that are useful to users, that engage and deliver results to business owners.
So what does this mean for the average online business? If done correctly SEO will generate relevant and qualified traffic to your website, where customers can view your company’s products and services, which in turn should lead to enquires and sales.
What does a Search Engine do with your website?
Search engines organise websites systematically. Think of a visit to the library, there are different sections provided: Fictional, non-fictional, fantasy, romance etc… These sections are grouped together to make it easy for you to find your book of choice. And for Liberians to easily put books together once returned.
The same applies to search engines. When you visit a search engine and type in for example: “Website Designers in Cape Town” Yahoo will provide you a list of websites which have the words Website Designers and Cape Town. These words are better known as ‘Keywords’ and are important in SEO as they lead to traffic to a company’s website.
So if you think about it logically Google is both the librarian and the library in one, it uses these keywords to find the books (websites) you want!
Ten years ago keywords were an important part of SEO. Companies would use the same words over and over again on their websites, and in turn they would gain better ranking with Search Engines. Then Google realised that this was not working in getting users the information they needed. As websites would have the same keywords from their homepage to the last, yet the content of the website would be of no benefit to the user.
Search was a proverbial wild wild west, so Google started investing heavily into creating automated programs or Algorithms; that would weed out the good from the bad…
Now for a brief history on Algorithms…
• 2003: ‘Google Dance Begins’ – In 2003 Google started using index refreshes to update websites. Tactics such as ‘keyword stuffing’ were put to a stop.
• 2004: Austin Update – Google took a step in stopping practises such as; mega-tag stuffing and hidden text on websites. To enable users to see text when they use a website.
• 2005: To control spam and link quality, Yahoo, Microsoft and Google joined forces to introduce the “no follow” attribute. This attribute controls spam and untrusted links to get in your website.
• 2007: Google introduced news, videos and images into search results or SERP (Search Engine Results Page).
• 2008: ‘Google Suggest’ was introduced. This gives you options to choose other related search as a result of keyword input.
• 2009: ‘Caffeine’ – 2009 saw Google come up with Caffeine which enabled Google Bots (crawlers) to rank and go through your website more easily.
• 2010: Websites with thin content were hit hard as content was becoming very important for search engine ranking. Also, Google and Bing started to look at Social Media as signals into ranking how useful a website is. Looking at the quality of social links.
• 2011: Panda came about. This saw many websites with thin content, websites with too many ads and content farms suffer and keeping up with SEO changes.
• 2012: A year later Penguin came about. Penguin helped rank down websites with spam and keyword stuffing.
• 2013: Humming Bird is the latest Google Algorithm. Instead of keywords being the main component when a search engine provides the best result for your search. Hummingbird is more of a “conversational” algorithm .i.e. ‘Locksmiths Cape Town’ vs. ‘Which Locksmiths can I find in Cape Town”.
• 2014: Pigeon, “In the News box” and Pirate Rolled out.
• 2015: Has seen new updates to Panda, Pigeon and “In the News box” and Pirate Rolled out.
Pillars of SEO
We briefly touched on the various elements that help websites rank successfully in the “Definition of SEO”. We will examine each of these elements in more detail further along in this guide, but for now here are the most important elements:
• Content (On-page SEO): On-page SEO refers to all the elements on your website that you have control of, such as they content, your Meta tags, website structure and more.
• Link-Building and Social Media (Off-page SEO): Off-page SEO refers to the elements that happen not on your website, but assist search engines in evaluating the trustworthiness or authority of your website. Link-building is a great way to lead traffic and ranking to your website as well. Websites that have good in-bound links are well recognised by search engines. Social Media plays a just as important role in successful SEO. Retweets from Twitter, comments and shares on Facebook lead to more good links and provide referrals from other websites.
2015/6 Google Predictions
SEO is always changing, predicting what will happen in 2015/6 is at best a long-shot! At Big Web media we believe Content will still play a huge part in websites being ranked, we see Google continuing its learning curve in Natural language as well as moving towards verifying the facts you state in your website independently…good by search engines.
Link building will still be important in 2015/6, the quality of links to and from your website will provide search engines on how to rank you, but naturally earned links will have to become the standard. Design will be an important part of SEO as the way your website looks will determine the quality of services, products and your business offers. The importance of Mobile and speed will continue to become more important in 2015/6 as your website will not only have to be speedy for customer interaction but your Mobile website should have great design as well or a potential customer may move on to a more inactive website.
Conclusion
On average, Google processes over 40,000 search queries per second. Today’s average consumer is opinionated with a lot of choice and will continue to turn to Search Engines to gather information and buy products, especially when they are on the go.
They want content that is relevant to them, and are always searching for new things and information.
In order to make your business stand out, you need to put the work in to position your brand appropriately not only offline, but where the masses are searching, communicating and engaging – and that’s now online and through Search Engines!