First, let’s ask ourselves… What is Search Engine Optimization?
SEO is the process of optimizing your online presence (on-page and off-page) in a way that meets a whole lot of criteria required from search engines like Google, Bing, Yandex, Yahoo, DuctGo, etc, in order to make your website noticed and ranked well.
What do search engines really need?
The simple answer is content that will “solve your users’ problems” and a user experience that will make them happy, but that’s too vogue.
In reality, there are three core elements that go hand in hand with SEO and search engines. Improve these and enjoy:
- On-page Optimization
- Outstanding Content with Awesome User Experience (UX)
- Trusted and Authoritative Backlinks
What is On-Site/Technical SEO?
On-site optimization (known as “on-page and Technical SEO”) is the process of optimizing web pages and content for users and search engine (Google, Bing, DuctGo, etc). The most common on-page practices include working on robots.txt, XML sitemap, internal links, structured data, security, responsiveness, speed, site structure, navigation, title tags, content, link structure and more.
The big goal of on-page optimization could be defined as an attempt of making it as easy as possible for users and search engines to:
- Better understand what your webpage is about;
- Identify that a webpage is relevant to a search query (a particular or a set of keywords);
- Have a useful and worthy webpage delivered to search engines with the goal to rank well in the SERP.
What is Content Optimization?
Known as Content marketing, that’s the process of making sure content is written in a way that will attract and solves an itch, a problem – the query – of your target audience.
The process of optimizing content includes ensuring the targeted keywords are present after strong keyword research is applied, adding meta titles and descriptions, incorporating proper H structure, linking to other useful pages on the same domain, etc.
A proper headlines optimization should be applied as well (H structure), which can navigate skimmers what’s the content about, plus this helps for increasing the CTR.
Visual elements like images can be added in order to increase user engagement.
How About User Experience (UX)?
Translated to a simple language, UX is the interaction and experience users have with your website, how it fulfils their needs. Consists of the user’s interactions while placing an order on your website or while reaching out to a service you offer.
What are backlinks in SEO?
Backlinks are links from one website to another. Let’s say someone has added an article talking about your brand, a product or service you offer and respectively adds a link to your website – that’s considered a backlink. The vice versa applies as well – you linking to a 3rd party website.
Are BackLinks important?
YES, especially in terms of SEO. They kinda represent a vote of confidence between sites. For search engines, when a third party website is linking to yours, is like they are “vowing” for your content. More sites linking to you make search engines presume that this indeed is content worth linking to, which is why it might be worth surfacing closer to the top positions on the SERP.
Conclusion!
All three elements are of major importance to your website’s performance. If you wonder where to start from, our suggestion is to focus your time on On-page and Content (plus UX) and entering the world of backlinks afterwards. Need help – hit the button below and Book a Discovery meeting! See you on the other side!