What is SEO? Understanding SEO and How to Use It

To understand what SEO is, we will describe it in simple sentences. SEO is an action or practice to optimize your website. This optimization will allow search engines to judge whether your website is eligible to appear in the top position of search results or not.

In this article, we will discuss the notion of SEO, how SEO works, and how to use SEO.

One thing you must understand, SEO is not a job that is done in one time. SEO is an endless process, which means you have to constantly optimize your website. To do this, you must understand how search engines work in ranking websites based on certain qualifications or requirements.

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SEO Traffic Type

If your website has good content but minimal visitors, then it has absolutely no meaning. You must ensure that the website is able to attract a number of visitors, let alone maintain them to continue to linger there.

There are many things you can do to bring in and manage traffic.

First of all, find out where your traffic is coming from. There are three types of SEO traffic:

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1. Quality Traffic

For business websites, the more site visitors change their status to buyers, the better the quality of their traffic.

You can use conversion rates to indicate the quality of website traffic. The quality itself depends on the type and purpose of the business, but 5% can already be rated as a good conversion rate.

Good traffic is also created when website visitors find out about the products you offer. If you sell Android smartphones, for example, the target is not people who want to buy fruit.

2. Quantity of Traffic

It is true that the quality of traffic is important. However, the quantity of traffic remains the most basic thing.

Generally the amount of traffic is calculated based on the number of visitors who enter and access the site. However, there are still many things that need to be considered and monitored, namely: site visitors, page views, and duration of visits.

All the things mentioned before do not need to be calculated by manual methods. You can use tools, such as Google Analytics or StatCounter , to analyze website traffic.

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3. Organic Traffic (Unpaid)

The type of traffic that is preferred by most website owners is organic traffic. Besides being free, organic traffic is also able to bring in more site visitors or even conversions.

For example, some internet users type specific keywords in the search bar, then click on the link displayed in the search results. Visits through these links are referred to as organic traffic.

Even though it looks easy, the competition for organic traffic is very tight. Therefore, you must implement good SEO practices to get satisfying results.

How SEO Works

SEO optimizes the website so people can find it using certain keywords.

Here are a number of benefits offered by the optimization process:

• Provide relevant information
• Make the search engine as a reliable source
• Bring in more organic traffic

Although search results can appear right away, the processes that occur in search engines are not as simple as one might imagine. Even search engines work before you type anything in the search bar and press the Enter key.

Below, we will describe how the search engines work.

There are three main tasks that search engines perform for each query or search that is sent:

• Crawling: This process occurs at an early stage. Crawling will collect information from all websites - from one page to another, from one link to another.
• Indexing: After gathering information, the web crawler will save it in the entry list: index.
• Ranking: Ranking results will be displayed sequentially, based on the most appropriate search.

To guarantee the quality of search, search engines use a set of rules or rules called algorithms.

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Search engine algorithms ensure that people can get relevant information from resources or trusted sources.

As a popular and widely used search engine, Google has a dedicated team that focuses entirely on algorithms. This team is responsible for improving the quality of user experience when using Google.

Sometimes Google calls its algorithm a special name. For example, Panda is an algorithm that deals with filtering, penalties, and content awards, while Penguin is an algorithm to prevent spamdexing. Finally, there is Hummingbird which will improve the quality of the two algorithms.

So, it's clear now that website content is a very important point for Google.

Have you ever heard of Page Authority (PA)?

Page Authority is a scoring system developed by Moz, ranging from 1 to 100, to predict the ranking of websites on search engines. This system will help you understand what qualifications are used by search engines to determine the best search results.

You can use Moz Link Explorer to check your page authority. Enter the URL you want to check and you will get the analysis results. The information obtained from the link analysis will be very useful for you to improve the quality of the website.

How to use SEO

In addition to how SEO works, you also need to understand how to use SEO.

Once again we remind you that SEO optimization is a non-stop process. Search engines always update their algorithms to provide the best search results.

Use the latest approach so SEO optimization can work as much as possible. Otherwise, it will only adversely affect the ranking of the website in search engine search results.

There are two categories of SEO: onsite SEO and offsite SEO.

Onsite SEO

As the name suggests, onsite SEO is a way to optimize websites from the inside.

This optimization deals with the adjustment or arrangement of elements that are on the website. Later search engines can crawl information easily. For example:

• Well formatted URL
• There are no keyword stuffing or attempts to manipulate web rankings on Google's search engine
• Alt Text image
• Proper headings (H1, H2, etc.)

Well, what are the things that need to be done when optimizing onsite SEO?

1. Keyword Research (Keyword Gathering)

Choose the right keyword or keywords to bring in organic traffic from the content that you post.

Keyword itself is a specific topic or idea that is typed by internet users on search engines.

So, you could say that keyword search is very important. This action will help you understand what keywords people are using to access your website. Make sure the target keywords are in the title, heading, and body contents.

2. Technical Review

To simplify how web crawlers work, do the few things below:

• Manage your sitemap
• Immediately replace or update broken links found on your website
• Avoid redirects
• Fix URL error

3. Optimization

Make sure your website has:

• Good structure
• Ease of navigation
• Relevant content

The three things above are very important. A good structure will confirm search engines about the most important web pages. Meanwhile, ease of navigation will make site visitors more comfortable and want to linger on your website. Finally, relevant content will bring more quality traffic.

4. User Experience

'Serve' site visitors well when they visit your website.

If they want to find out more about the products on your website, then offer products that are relevant or according to their needs.

You can create categories to facilitate product search.

Also add detailed information on each product displayed on the website, including relevant images.

If you work as a blogger, content related categories will provide easy navigation for site visitors.

Don't forget to set the layout. An attractive website appearance will bring in new visitors and make them last longer.

Above all, there is one thing that is most important, namely website performance. Make sure your website has a good loading speed.

Whatever the content, make it easy for users to find and explore your website.

Offsite SEO

Offsite SEO is not so technical when compared to Onsite SEO. However, that does not mean offsite SEO is not important.

Generally offsite SEO is used to promote your website. This way, people will know that your website is worth visiting.

Here are some ways to do offsite SEO:

1. Content Marketing
Content is very important for a website, and because of that, content marketing is increasingly being used lately.

Content marketing is one of the most effective ways to increase a website's ranking in search engine results. If you have a good and structured content marketing strategy, then you can:

• Bring in new site visitors
• Influencing people to buy products
• Improve business reputation
• Save cost

2. Promotion

If the website already has a lot of subscribers or followers, then the next step is to focus on making good content. However, if the website is apparently still empty of visitors, then you need to do a promotion.

By promoting, your website can bring in more visitors. In addition, promotion will also make your website superior to competitors. The more creative and attractive the promotion is, the easier it will be to remember your brand. For more competitive niches, this strategy will provide significant results.

3. Public Relations

Public relations will make your business more known.

Although you will incur a number of costs, Public Relations are still important to:

• Building brand awareness
• Provide additional information
• Regulate authority
• Improve community relationships

Conclusion

Now you have learned many things about what SEO is in this article.

SEO is a very important tool to increase the visibility of your website. If you are currently struggling in the business world, SEO will bring in more traffic and that means there will be many customers or buyers.

To be able to make high traffic, you have to run onsite SEO methods and also offsite SEO.

Before implementing SEO, you must know the single most important thing about a website, which is traffic. The following is a summary of the types of traffic:

• Quantity of traffic. The number of visitors who come to your website.
• Quality of traffic. Target visitors who are relevant to your website.
• Organic traffic (not paid). Traffic obtained by the website from search engines.

Now you already know why SEO is very important for the growth and development of websites. Remember that SEO is an endless and ongoing process. To learn more about SEO and what it entails, you can stay tuned for more of our new updates. 

Congratulations on optimizing the website!