What, Why and How of SEO

If you’re reading this article, either you have no idea about SEO or you are a beginner who wants to know more about it. Either way, this article will provide you a basic idea about what SEO is, why is it necessary for a website to use SEO, how does it function and then you can implement it in your website to increase traffic in your website.
(Traffic to a website = large number of users or visitors to the website)

About SEO: The Basics

If you need a definition for SEO, here it is according to Wikipedia:

“Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the online visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine’s unpaid results — often referred to as “natural”, “organic”, or “earned” results.”

“SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION”, as the name suggests, is to optimize or modify your website in such a way so that it appears on the Search Engine’s results page whenever a user or customer types a Search query.

Wondering what a “Search query” is? Search query is anything that you type in the search bar of a search engine (like Google, Bing, and Yahoo etc.).

We can also say that SEO is a method by which Search Engines can act as an answering machine to users’ Search queries.

Why SEO?

Search Engines are the most common platform where users go to search for any information that they need on any topic that they want to know and learn about.

Don’t you think it would be amazing if someone is searching for the product or service or information on the Internet that you offer and your website is one of the first to appear on the Search Results page?

Most people are much likely to click the links they find on the first page of the Search Results page. This is where SEO comes into the picture.

How does SEO function?

SEO’s goal is to produce pages relevant to the search query typed by a user to help them find what they are actually looking for. It achieves this goal using robots (also called “bots”) after passing through three stages:

1. Crawling: Firstly, the bots “crawl” (i.e. search) throughout the Internet to search for content like web pages with text, images, videos etc. This is the reason why bots are also called “crawlers” or “spiders”. They go from page to page and link to link in their search and the process of searching for new content never stops.
2. Indexing: After the crawling process, the pages get collected in an enormous list called “index”. Search Engines use this index to produce search results. But not every page that is crawled can make it up to the index. For example, when there are multiple copies of the same content.
3. Ranking: This is the last step to be followed by Search Engines. It includes matching the words and phrases used in the search query to the available index and listing out all the results on the Search Results page based on their ranks. Each relevant content is ranked according to an algorithm (i.e. a mathematical procedure) which varies from search engine to search engine and it also varies from time to time.

I hope this article helps you to figure out how important SEO is for your website and why it is one of the most basic marketing tools required for your business. Kindly contact us for any further details on steps to drive in traffic to your website or any other suggestions on SEO. We would love to answer your queries.

Know your Search Engine, Know your Audience, and Know your Business!