What I Learnt About SEO at Cashify!
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of maximizing the number of visitors (traffic) on the website by ensuring that the website appears high on the list of search results from a search engine. The core objective of SEO at Cashify is to increase the traffic on the website coming from organic sources. Organic traffic is essentially the traffic coming from unpaid search results, while the other source of traffic is paid ads (which is inorganic).
There are 3 major things that are taken into account when it comes to ordering paid search results:
- Quality and Relevance
- Bidding amount
- Number of clicks
When it comes to ordering organic search results, there are around 200 parameters that are taken into account. Some of the most important ones have been described below in brief:
- Relevancy
How relevant is your website with respect to the keywords searched? For example, if the keywords searched is, ‘sell used phones’ then websites that buy/sell used phones will get higher priority in the results displayed.
- Content
Say you go to a restaurant called ‘Best Fried Chicken’ and when you see the menu; there’s only vegetarian food. Disappointed, aren’t you? Same goes for your website as well. The content on your website should be heavily related to the search query if you want your website to rank high in the search results.
- Depth
Higher priority is assigned to websites that have more depth, i.e. a greater number of links to other pages on the website. A website that has multiple locations that the user can navigate to browse different varieties of information will get a higher priority as opposed to a website that has just one page and no navigation links.
- URL Structure
It refers to how the URL is displayed — the cleaner the URL the better. The URL should not contain randomly arranged alphabets and numbers. Instead, it should be ordered and intuitive with respect to the keywords searched. It is also a plus point if the keywords searched for are present in the URL itself.
- Page Speed
Higher priority is given to websites that have a shorter load time. If the website is heavy and comparatively takes longer to load, then it goes down in order of the results. We all know everyone likes fast things, especially on the internet.
- Architecture
Architecture refers to how the different pages on the website are linked. The architecture should be accurate and well-defined, with to and fro links available to easily navigate through the website. A link that says ‘Mumbai’ but redirects to information pertaining to Delhi on clicking is an example of poor architecture.
- UI/UX
The UI/UX of the website is also of high importance. The UI should be clean, well-defined and structured without any breaks.
- Backlinks
Backlinks are incoming links to a webpage. When a webpage links to any other page, it’s called a backlink. If a link on our website or our alliances’ is to a spammy website, the ranking priority will take a hit.
- Positivity around the web
This is a sentimental analysis in simplified terms. It always helps if brands and netizens are saying good things about your product on the various platforms hosted on internet.
