How exactly does SEO work?

How does SEO work?

When a user searches for a term on a search engine like Google, the results that he or she is presented with is a series of websites that are relevant to the query and websites that have a solid domain authority (among other factors described below).

For example when you search for ‘chocolate cake ideas’, the top results are the ones that are adopting the best SEO practices in Google eyes.

This is mainly because the search engines use advanced crawlers that gather the information on every website, gathering every bit of content it can find on the Internet. That creates an index for every website that is compared to the algorithm that Google has built for the best SEO practice.

What factors affect SEO?

Whether you are trying to learn more about SEO or want actual ranking techniques on how to improve your website’s SEO, there is a set of on-site and off-site factors that Google and other search engines favor when ranking every site. Even though there are more than 200 factors that affect your site rank, the good news is that anyone can improve their website by simply working on a handful of them.

Here are the most important factors that affect a website’s SEO:

1. Domain Authority

Domain Authority (DA) is a metric that shows how much trust your domain has built over time by a matter of backlinks and age.

THE MORE SITES THAT TALK ABOUT YOURS, THE HIGHER YOUR AUTHORITY.

Similarly, the older your domain, the higher its domain authority.

Another important factor that I’ve found is the relevance of the domain name in respect to the main keywords you are targeting.

Lastly, a few of my SEO expert friends have reported that shorter domains will generally outperform longer domains.

2. Keywords

SEO begins with picking the right keywords (which you can very well find using Google’s Keyword Planner or Ahrefs). My strategy there is to start by picking medium to low competition keywords and then slowly build up my post to target more competitive terms. If you are looking to rank then you should definitely include LSI keywords (keywords that are synonyms to your target terms). For instance, a site that talks about “portable chargers” can also include terms such as “power banks”, “portable batteries for phones” and so forth. Make sure to include the keywords that you want to rank for in the title and in the sub-headings.

3. Relevancy and Context

Search engines are smarter than ever before. They do know the difference between a relevant page and a copied one. They can also distinguish whether just site is about oranges or protein bars. I recommend sticking to a niche when building out a site and catering content specific to that particular niche. For me, my niche is online marketing and SEO.

4. Number of Inbound and Outbound links

The more relevant links your website is pointing to, the greater your SEO score. Same goes for inbound links which are actually more favored, especially if they are coming from prestigious, relevant and popular sources. You can get backlinks by getting yourself featured on big news sites for example.

5. Site Speed

Google really cares about how quickly your site loads. To speed up your site you can use caching plugins such as W3 Total Cache or use a CDN to deliver your content in a faster way.

6. Clean and responsive design

Nowadays, the best optimized websites are the ones that are clean, functional and responsive to devices of all types and sizes. In fact, Google even favors websites that have mobile-friendly design than ones that don’t have. If you are using WordPress, you can install the AMP plugin to have your site load blazingly fast. If your site is not using WordPress, you should learn how to make use of the accelerated mobile pages project by Google.

7. URL structure

The easier your url, the better it is for humans and search engines to understand what your post is all about.

Several studies have confirmed that the shorter the url, the better. Nevertheless, you still want to make sure you are including your top keyword in the slug for an added SEO juice.

8. Length of your content

Whenever you are writing a blog post that you want to rank, you want to make sure you are going into as much detail as possible. Search Engines have been rewarding long-form content and in 2018, you won’t rank unless you write at least 1500-2000 words per post.

Why should you do SEO?

Great question.

SEO has the potential to drive tons of quality leads to your website for free.

For instance, when you search for “custom portable chargers“, aren’t you more likely to become a client of whoever shows up on Google?

This is the power of search engine optimization.

It brings you warm leads that you can later deliver ads to or even sell products to.

Are these tips just for Google SEO?

Google dominates the search engine space with almost 80% of all global searches. Yahoo and Bing have about 9% each. Even though the techniques we’ve been discussing here are particularly about Google SEO, they apply to all search engines alike.

Are there any other alternatives to SEO?

Given that SEO’s main purpose is to drive traffic to your site, you can also get more visits by means of ads (like Google Adwords or Facebook ads), you can also drive traffic through affiliate links and get quoted on articles in highly trafficked sites.

A final word

In the end, the best way to learn SEO is by doing it. The more organic, natural and unique content you write on your responsive website, the better results you should expect. However, just like every other practice, SEO requires time (at least a couple of months to kick-off) so be a bit patient and don’t get discouraged. It took me at least a year to start seeing some consistent traffic on my site.

The bottom line is that SEO is not a one-time job. It is a recurring strategy that every website should focus on. It can take time, but if you’re willing to learn then it will definitely pay off in the long-run. Getting organic traffic is just the first step in building a successful business, don’t forget that you can also get traffic by getting featured on major sites, driving a lot of traffic from social media, and building a loyal fan base that will continuously buy from you and refer their friends.

If you would like me to take the cumbersome task of SEO off your hands, I’m more than happy to do so. I enjoy doing this and have worked on multiple successful projects for clients in unrelated industries, because the principles apply to any type of content. Send me a message and we can chat about how to grow your business.