What is SEO? The search engine optimization meaning defined

What is SEO (search engine optimization) you ask?

OnlineBusinessConsulting got the answer.

If you are brand new to SEO, you need to grasp the basic meaning of SEO if you want to successfully promote and rank your website content higher on search engine result pages of Google and Bing.

With that said, realize that knowing what Search engine optimization is, is only the first step to understanding the way search engines work and ranking on page one.

What is SEO? The search engine optimization meaning defined plus other helpful explanations

In the sections below, we will answer the question of, what SEO means plus a brief explanation of other related basics.

So what is the definition of search engine optimization(SEO)?

SEO is the acronym for Search Engine Optimization.

Search engine optimization is the process of improving a website's content, technical aspects, etc to increase its chances of being served by search engines on their search result pages.

The process basically allows an article, blog, service, and/or product page to rank higher on SERP for targeted keywords and phrases.

Consider this other related article on search engine optimization(SEO) basics and more,

• what is WordPress SEO
• advanced WordPress search engine optimization(SEO) strategies
• Search process

SEO vs PPC

Some people may get search engine optimization(SEO) and pay-per-click(PPC) confused.

Since we are on the subject of search engine optimization meaning, we might as well clear the confusion and briefly explain the difference between SEO and PPC.

PPC is the results that you see at the top and bottom of search result pages(SERP). They normally have the word "ad" or "advertisement" next to them.

You have to pay search engines to be displayed and charged for each time a searcher clicks an ad to your site or landing page(you will also be charged if searchers call an ad tracking number even if they did not click your ad link).

This is why it is called pay-per-click.

Ads are one of the revenue areas that makes Google a trillion-dollar company.

SEO results on the hand are shown in the middle and are free.

In a way, you pay for SEO when you hire an agency specializing in it to help your website rank.

What are the factors that affect SEO?

Now that we have defined SEO and the difference between it and PPC, let's briefly discuss the factors that affect search engine optimization success.

Understanding how optimization for search engines works and the factors that influence them helps one hit their ranking goals.

There are many factors that form part of the process of getting a page to rank higher on the search engine results page.

Here are some of those factors that may influence an SEO success:

• Whether your website is secure (using HTTPS vs HTTP)
• Whether your website is friendly for mobile phone users
• Is your website lagging? How fast or slow are web pages loading on your website?
• Effective interlinking within your website
• Whether a website page has appropriate markup for schema (there's a lot of debate if this really helps)
• The quality of the content of the web pages
• An in-depth content(this doesn't mean writing 1500-3000 words. Focus on writing consise, thorough and straightforward content. 700 to 1200 should do for most topics if you're an expert)
• The anchor texts of your backlinks and on-page links
• The number of quality backlinks that point back toward your site
• Whether you have images that are optimized for your pages
• Whether pages are easily crawled and indexed
• Having clean codes that search engines can render
• etc

How you influence the governing factors listed above and others is best done with the help of the right SEO service agency that knows how to apply those strategies properly.

Importance of conversion in search engine optimization

We can't help you understand what SEO is without mentioning the importance of converting the traffic that is sent from an SEO campaign.

Conversion is very often associated with a sale, though in the world of online marketing, to define conversion exclusively in that way is too narrow a definition.

The way we define conversion is that it happens each time a visitor to the website completes a desired action while they are on the site.

This can be a click-through to get to the next web page if that happens to be the main goal for that particular page.

For instance, it may well be a subscription to a newsletter, or it can be a visitor who buys your product.

To sum it up, conversion occurs whenever someone has completed the action that you wanted them to do.

To achieve a better conversion you or the marketing agency that you hire have to make sure that the right keywords with the right intents are SEO optimized.

It is important to understand the different types of intents of web queries if you want to search engine optimize your pages correctly and for the traffic to lead to conversions.

Hire an agency or do SEO yourself?

Should you hire an SEO company or do it yourself?

It depends on many factors.

1. Time

Do you have the time to run your business efficiently while doing SEO properly?

Do you have the time to create well-optimized contents?

Do you know the research and find the right topics that will rank and drive leads?

Some things might seem simple when doing optimization but takes time. For example, optimizing an image for SEO might seem easy but one image might take 1 to 3 hours.

To do it correctly so you can rank the image high and help with conversion, you need to spend time finding the right image and redesigning it with visual and text illustrations for the pay it will be posted on.

Then you have to spend time compressing and resizing the image for speed( another factor that helps with search engine performance) before uploading it to your site.

You also want to make sure that you name the file correctly to correspond with the page title or concept it will be uploaded to before uploading.

When uploaded, you have to optimize the alt text, name, caption, and description.

2. Skill

Just because one knows the definition of SEO and reads tips on ways to boast search engine ranking to doesn't mean that he or she can do SEO efficiently or even understand it.

There are so many moving parts that one needs to fully grasp

• the way Search Engines processes like crawling, indexing, and ranking work
• technical SEO troubleshooting and implementation
• on-page and off-page linking properly to avoid penalty
• search engine Natural Language Processing
• Entity optimization
• how to fix and optimization website database
• website speed optimization to know what causing a web page not to load fast and solutions to speed it up
• advanced troubleshooting and improvement SEO checklist and knowing how to implement them(knowing what to do is not the same as how to implement what you know)

3. Money

Another thing to consider when it comes to whether to optimize your website for search engines yourself or hire an agency is finance.

If you have the money just hire one of the best marketing agencies to help you.

REFERENCE:https://www.onlinebusinessconsultants.net/national-and-local-seo-services/

Just pay an expert and focus on running your business and growing it.

Recap

We defined SEO as the acronym search engine optimization which is a form of online marketing whose main goal is to rank a website keyword higher in search engines like Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo(a great search engine for privacy), etc.

By using various search engine optimization(SEO) strategies one can achieve higher ranking position on the result pages of search engines.

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