How Does SEO Work?

In the digital ecosystem, online presence is the anchor for businesses and professionals, driving growth.  You are likely to have either come across the term SEO or have used SEO in some way. However, the problem is that SEO and its workings is often misunderstood, leading to outcomes that are the exact opposite of desired results. Most individuals wrongly assume SEO to be highly complex.  Far from it, SEO is a fairly simple concept and its success entirely depends on the strategies, and implementation. Here’s a little SEO knowledge discovery to add real value to business outcomes.

Basics – search results, visibility, indexing and ranking

Let’s assume that you have created the most innovative and universal, cost effective mobile phone charger. You need to a) get the word out that you have created the best charger and b) reach out to people who need mobile chargers. The problem is, how do you do that when there are thousands of mobile charger models? You need to be digitally visible, and “right there on the top of search results” whenever a user looks for a mobile charger. This is precisely what SEO is all about.

Digging deeper – how does it work?

SEO is a combination of multiple actions that are all designed to ensure that your website – through specific webpage(s) – ranks high on search results. Search engines such as Google, Bing rely on various metrics and parameters to determine which page/website with the term ‘mobile charger’ is most relevant to the user launching the search. Search engines rely on web crawlers, indexing and ranking to offer ‘organic’ search results that are ranked from most relevant to least relevant. In the cited example of ‘mobile charger’ as a search keyword, depending on your location and the device from which you launch the search, you will get around 13 pages of results with 10 listings of websites in each page.

These results are not the same everywhere. You may be in the same location as another user launching a search, but will get different results. Search engines are intelligent – they look at various parameters, such as your location, the availability of chargers in that location, your device, and the rankings of websites that are relevant to the subject of mobile chargers. For instance, a brand may be ranked number one in Philadelphia, but could be ranked 6^th in London. Here, it is important to know that the quality is the same, but the relevance differs.

How to succeed with good SEO strategies?

You need to have a strategy in place that will make your brand most relevant when users search for a mobile charger. As mentioned above, Search Engines use web crawlers to index webpages according to the specific content in the pages. So, you need to have keywords in the title of your Webpage, in the headers, and the right number of keywords elsewhere within the page. Search engines are always on the lookout for context relevance to filter out spam and blackhat techniques – like keyword stuffing in irrelevant content. So, it is important that you use keywords that are relevant to the main keyword and content that adds greater value to the reader.

This needs to be then followed up with the right links to other pages that are relevant to the subject of mobile chargers. Additionally, you need to include Alt Tags, Image Names, Header Tags, and Internal Links etc., as part of a comprehensive strategy to win with SEO. Your strategy should also involve competitor analysis and paid advertising to come on tops. With all the right elements and a continuous process of optimization, you can end up on the first two pages of search results that actually matter the most in terms of business outcomes of Search Engine Optimization.