SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, the practice by marketers to rank higher on search engines results pages (SERPs). Search engines are one of the primary sources of traffic for most businesses, so being listed at the top positions on SERPs typically results in increased clicks, visitors, customers and revenue.
Rand Fishkin, co-founder and CEO of Moz, provided an excellent definition of SEO marketing: it is an approach to improving organic search rankings for websites and pages by optimizing content on them, analyzing keywords for use on them, building backlinks to your site from external links and increasing conversions as well as brand awareness. Furthermore, SEO efforts may also help achieve specific business goals such as increasing conversions or driving site visitors or brand recognition.
Understanding what SEO stands for in marketing is essential as its nuances change continuously and rapidly. With so much competition on the SEO scene, it’s vital that marketers keep an eye out on user intent while monitoring what competitors are up to.
An SEO strategy requires taking many elements into account, making it hard to pinpoint “best practices”. Google frequently updates their algorithms and search engine ranking factors; nonetheless, there are certain general best practices recommended by experts that should be adhered to.
Begin your audience/market research process: Who are your users and what problems are they trying to solve? Performing an audience/market research phase will enable you to identify the most frequently used and pertinent search terms, then focus your content creation efforts around creating content that provides answers.
Conduct keyword research: Conducting this step allows you to discover which search terms your audience is using and can also assist with assessing competition for those keywords. Once you have your list of keywords in hand, create content centered around those searches – content that provides unique value that’s tailored specifically to their intent and search intent.
Consider your site and pages’ structure: How your content is organized can give search engines an indication of its subject matter; particularly how HTML text with heading tags signals its contents to search engines.
Establish an impressive external link profile: Your inbound link count and quality can have a considerable effect on SEO rankings; more authoritative and trustworthy links equal better results in terms of SEO performance.
Make sure your content is structured and readable: How you organize, label, and format your content can have an immense effect on user experience as well as search engines reading and indexing it. This could include using headers, paragraph length, font size, bolding/italics and reading level as elements to consider when formatting your material for publication.
Invest in technical SEO: This encompasses the behind-the-scenes aspects of your website, such as web analytics, search engine submissions and tracking URLs. Incorporating tools like Google Tag Manager or UTM codes as a part of this effort can also help.