Understanding how SEO works

Are you looking to generate business leads and increase online traffic, but don’t know where to start? The first step is understanding the role of SEO or Search Engine Optimization as an important tool to further the online presence of your business.

More companies are following the digital route, which means that there’s more competition for that first page ranking. And that’s where SEO comes in. So it’s likely that this term is heard of, but not discussed in a way where there’s a general understanding of its benefits for businesses.

What is SEO and how does it work?

SEO is the process of increasing website traffic (or gaining online following) and promoting brand exposure through ‘natural’, ‘organic’ or unpaid search engine results. The aim is to reach higher rankings in Google and other search engine platform’s results pages with the goal of gaining returning visitors.

These search engines filter through excessive amounts of content and evaluates different factors to decide what answers the query best. In other words, through ‘crawling’ and ‘indexing’, these search engines retrieve and assess content like PDFs, videos, webpages and organises it by linking it to the query through ‘ranking’.

It’s becoming more common for search engine results pages or (SERP)’s to be driven by advertising with features like “People also ask” boxes or videos. This is meant to offer helpful online support with minimal effort.  The accessibility and user-friendliness of your website plays a key role in this process. For this reason, it’s important to have an understanding of current trends, online search results and specific words people are using.

What is the importance of SEO?

Essentially, if your SEO efforts are effective, your rankings will be higher. Continuous SEO practices are therefore necessary to maintain your website’s position. If your website is functional, contains original content and ranks proper keywords, your online traffic will expand over a period of time and increase revenue. But this depends on how these SEO strategies are implemented.

Each business website will have different goals, so it’s essential to assess the points of focus and targets that needs to be set. Optimization is an important tool to increase website visibility, and will ensure that your content is indexed correctly and better displayed in the search results. The aim of any online site should be to have a fast and functional website with unique content that offers a good user experience.