Introduction to SEO for your website

Dear Learners,

Search Engine Optimisation, or as we know it SEO, is the process of positioning your website as Relevant, Credible & finally a Popular & an authority resource on your segment of business. It is a heartbeat for websites that keeps the momentum going. It definitely is a gradual & a continuous process. It starts even before the website is created & keeps evolving as the business grows.

Why SEO for any website?

Why do websites need SEO? Well the simple answer to this is we as people have changed the way we do things. We turn to internet during multiple moments. Lets broadly classify them as...

1. Moments of research (Looking for a restaurant, product, or a review on the internet)
2. Moment of decision (Compare products & services, interacting with the brand & downloading spec sheets)
3. Moments of purchase (Moment of truth) when your prospect is ready to become a customer.

Weather you are a blog providing information, or a platform enabling support or a website selling products or services, you want users to find your website in their moment of need. When they are looking for something on Search Engines and they cannot find you, you end up missing out on your potential traffic that could convert on your website & eventually your business.

Here are some cool stats for your understanding of current internet usage in India & USA

On-page & Off-page optimisation

To avoid the above scenario, you need to adapt a set of practices that would improve your chances to get listed on Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) when people are searching for what you offer. These set of practices could be broadly divided into two categories.

On-page Optimisation

The set of activities you would do to enhance visibility & ranking that is within the scope of your website. On-page is focussed on creating relevancy & positive user engagement experiences. This could be design, layout, themes, URLs, Images & even content that is on the most important pages of your website. Optimising all the UI (User Interface) & UX (User Experience) related elements of your website. This includes tools, forms, entry-exit pages, and much more.

Off-page Optimisation

The set of activities that are taken outside the peripherals of your website. These activities are focussed on creating a sense of trust, authority & popularity towards users with relation to your business niche. The quality of pages that are linking to your website account for major part of this process. Google assigns the quality of your website with a score called Page Rank (PR). It is this PR that defines the ranking of your pages for keywords you want to be found. 

Why Google & What is Google search console?

According to a SmartInsights report, almost 75% of global searches happen on Google. Read more on this report here. Google clearly is setting benchmarks on content & design standards of websites for ranking. It also is spending a lot of time energy, money and resources on research & development. Hence its a good idea to start your SEO strategy keeping Google in mind.

Google enables website owners to submit, manage & control the search behaviour & discoverability of their website on Google search engine with its own platform called Google Search Console, most popularly known as Google Webmaster Tools. This platforms gives comprehensive reports on your website indexing, discoverability & content issues. More on this coming up later.

How does Google work?

Watch the below video to understand how Google Search Works.

Hope you liked the video. As next steps to your learning, Visit Google's resource page to read more about how pages are ranked & an overview on algorithms that influence search results.

SEO Basics - What do I need to know?

Since this blog is and will always be focussed on the "Doing" side of things, here is the list of things that will be covered in future posts & would help you get started in your learning of SEO.

1. How to look at a website from an SEO perspective.
2. How to research for keywords
3. How to submit your Wordpress website to Google's index
4. How to write and edit content and making it search friendly
5. How to add schema using "data highlighter" tool on the Google Search console.
6. How to be discovered faster using external tools. 

Now that you know whats coming up, be sure to follow this blog and don't miss on these cool SEO learnings. Make sure you share this blog with your friends who need it & feel free to comment below to talk about how you liked this post and what you would like to see here.

Have a great day ahead.

Happy learning.

Mitul Shingadia