The full form of SEO is “Search Engine Optimization”. It’s a process by which you rank your website on search engines like; Google, Microsoft Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo etc. When people search for information, services, products, or anything the websites with better SEO appear first. Therefore, the main purpose of SEO is to drive more traffic to your website.
Google search engine is used by around 80% of the users to search any query or information. Majority of the internet users prefer Google’s algorithm because of its ability to provide relevant, accurate and trusted content each time. Over the years, Google’s efficiency and performance has made it the most reliable search engine.
A search engine shows thousands of websites and content each time anyone searches for any queries. But only a few of them are clicked by the user. If you think about it more precisely, only the websites that ranked above mostly get clicked. The way of ranking these sites on SERPs is known as Search Engine Optimization.
With the influence of Artificial Intelligence, search engines are now providing their users with the feature of AI searching. It can improve the quality and relevance of the search process and make it even easier to search for any information. Moreover, with the advancement of AI, now more accurate and real time data can be obtained by the help of generative AI search engines.
Table of Contents
Why SEO is important?
SEO is the practice of ranking websites on SERPs, on the other hand, digital marketing is the marketing of products via digital means. Digital marketing covers a wide range of marketing funnels and website marketing is one of them. With the help of SEO, the product page can become more visible. It would result in more engagement giving a boost to the sales.
We know that the main goal of digital marketing is to promote the products to make sales, and SEO is promoting the product by the help of ranking. That’s how both the concepts are interrelated with each other. Whether it’s a matter of promoting a product or conveying a brand message, SEO can always help to optimize the process of digital marketing.
SEO is needed for all types of business, brands and organizations.This is because it is a holistic marketing approach. It is estimated that the SEO industry would rise to 122.11 billion dollars by 2028. That’s why the demand for SEO is gradually growing. With the advancement of Search Engines and the Internet, the requirement for SEO would continue to increase. [Please provide an SS of Google Trend]
Google Search Engine And Generative Ai Search: Overview
SEO is the process of continuous optimization of a website to rank on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). So, the main goal of SEO is to make your website more visible to your potential visitors. Google uses more than 200+ ranking signals that influence the algorithm of their ranking.
SEO is a large field with several sub-categories. If we want to summarize them, we can classify SEO into four main categories. They are:
On-Page SEO: The optimization of keywords in title tag, meta description and webpage URL is included in this category.
Off-Page SEO: The process of building high quality backlinks and establishment of authority is included in this category of SEO.
Technical SEO: The insurance of proper architecture of the site alongside optimization of page loading time is taken care of in this category.
User Interaction Signals: The matching of your site with the intent of the user search is focused on this sector. To maintain a low bounce rate of your site is the main priority of this category of SEO.
What is Generative AI Search Engine?
It is a process of advancement in searching by using generative AI and machine learning technology. Such search engines can provide more relevant and accurate information for the user. In response to the user’s previous queries, responses, and recommendations, it can generate many related search results.
There was a time when we needed to use specific keywords to get the most relevant results. But now generative AI has increased the power of search engines to provide associated information by many folds. At present, it is not necessary to give an accurate keyword to get satisfactory results. Rather, with the help of our browsing history, intent, and real-time data, AI-generative search engines can accurately predict and give us the information we seek.
Search Engine and Generative AI Search Engine
Generative AI has better language processing abilities; hence, it provides contextual and user-intentioned, relevant results more precisely. Search engines provide results based on keyword matching. That’s why there is a higher possibility of giving irrelevant and unrelated results.
Generative AI can also create their own text, image, and content in response to a user query. Search engines only depend on the existing content.
Generative AI gave a more dynamic response that was based on user history and intent. It can provide more insights beyond the content present on the website.
The generative AI search engine has better research capability to drive out the best and most related content as per user demand.
Advantages of Generative AI Search Engines
- Better user intent: fulfilling searching with precise relevance.
- Can provide accurate and correct information.
- It makes searching faster, more natural, and friendlier.
- Great understanding of user context and query.
- Real-time data-providing ability.
- More personalized response.
- Enhanced user experience.
- Effective ability to respond to complex queries.
- Generate responses with multiple content types, like images, text, and infographics.
- Got better scalability.
- Useful integration of cross-domain knowledge.
- Can learn and evolve based on experience.
- Better decision-making.
Influence of AI in Search Engine
Generative AI has made search engines more than a storehouse of information. Now, search engines are not only providing relevant information, but they are more interactive than ever. AI-generative search engines are displaying images, graphs, and voices of their own to make the search process more fun.
AI has drastically influenced all sectors of the digital field. SEO is no exception. With the help of AI, the scope of SEO has widened even more. A short preview about how AI influences SEO is given below:
Natural Language Processing (NLP): AI driven chatbots and tools use NLP to provide immediate response to user queries. It ultimately provides a great user experience.
Content Creation: AI can give you high-quality content ideas. It can also generate hooks that can drive engagement. However, it is not suggested to use AI to completely generate content. This is because AI content is not that unique.
Keyword Research: The NLU (Natural Language Understanding) capabilities of AI has enabled them to deliver trending keywords, topics and queries.
On-Page SEO: AI can analyze user behavior and engagement metrics to optimize meta tags, headings and internal linking.
Voice Search Optimization: AI assistants like Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant can find relevant results as per the given queries and keywords.
Image and Video Optimization: AI generates images and videos are a great feature to have. One can generate their own unique images and videos related to their content effortlessly. It can also optimize those contents to drive traffic on your website.
Cracking Algorithms: AI generated tools can help to analyze and crack the algorithm of search engines. It would certainly help in better ranking of SEO.
Prediction: Based on the trends and demands, AI can predict niche and content that would get viral in the upcoming days.
Sectors of SEO
SEO is crucial for brands and businesses looking to achieve their key goals like conversions, visits and sales. It helps to gain the trust of search engines and potential purchasers. SEO has a few sectors. Each of the sectors requires different tactics and formulas of SEO to drive traffic.These sectors are:
Ecommerce SEO: SEO tactics related to the optimization of category pages, product pages, product images, product reviews, schema, internal linking and more need to be applied here. For example, online business, marketing are included in this type of SEO.
Enterprise SEO: SEO means to deal with websites that have more than 1 million plus pages. Large scale challenges need to be resolved here to rank this type of website. Government pages, Large retail companies are included in this type of SEO.
International SEO: This type of SEO deals with ranking of international business and brands. SEO experts, those who can handle multiregional and multilingual websites are more suitable to handle this type of website. Tourism, Finance and Banking are main examples of this type of SEO.
Local SEO: The main goal of this type of SEO is to attract local customers and visitors. It mainly focuses on optimizing the website in accordance with the preference of the local traffic. Restaurants, Health Care, Real State are included in this category of SEO.
News SEO: This is one of the difficult types of SEO, because it needs to be ranked instantly. Those who have expertise in paywalls, section pages, news-specific structured data are more suitable for this type. News and journalism related sites follow this type of SEO.
RankBrain and how it influences SEO
It is already discussed that search engines depend on different types of algorithms while ranking the website on SERPs. That’s why, if it is possible for any SEO expert to have some knowledge about these algorithms and how they work, then it is also possible for him to trigger these algorithms to rank a certain site. The knowledge about these algorithms and their working mechanism is known as RankBrain.
RankBrain is a machine learning program that focuses on understanding Google’s core algorithm. We know machine learning is the continuous observation and learning of different computer programs over a period. That means, RankBrain is the continuous learning of Google’s algorithm and their mechanism. That’s why this is so helpful for SEO experts. It can give them an extra edge while ranking websites in comparison to other sites in the long run.
SEO and some common terms
There are some terms that are often associated with SEO but are significantly different from it. They are:
SEO vs PPC
SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization” while PPC stands for “Pay Per Click”. SEO is free but PPC comes with a charge. In other words, whenever a PPC optimized link is clicked the providers of it charge money but for SEO the providers won’t charge any money.
Now, the question may arise which one is better? There is not a specific answer to it. If you want to establish a long-term plan, then you should go with SEO. Otherwise if you want to see quick results then PPC is a go to option for you. But it is important to keep in mind that once you stopped paying the traffic through PPC would also stop coming.
SEO vs SEM
SEM stands for “Search Engine Marketing”. It solely focuses on marketing and driving more traffic to a website. It is a combination of both SEO and PPC. That means, it drives traffic by both organic and paid means.
So, in simpler terms SEO is a free way by which organic traffic can be gained in a long-term planning while SEM is paid means by which both organic and paid traffic can be driven to a website but within comparatively quicker time.
SERP
SERP stands for Search Engine Result Pages. Whenever you search something on search engines like Google or Yahoo a list of different websites related to that search appears in front of you. These websites constitute a SERP. SEO helps to make your website appear among a list of thousands of other websites. SERP comes with many features like:
Knowledge Panel: The boxes of information that appear on the right side of search results provide quick facts and details about your search.
Featured Snippets: The concise answer that appears at the top of your organic search results.
Maps: The location or place of your search along with other relevant places like restaurants or businesses.
Images: The row of images related to your query that appear alongside text results.
Videos: The videos that appear along with other search results. Videos appear more promptly if your search result is related to any tutorials or reviews.
Top Stories: If your search result is related to a news related query, then a section featuring latest and popular news appears.
People Also Ask: The section with questions and query related to your search can be found if you scroll slightly below.
Carousels: The horizontal scrolling list that appears for searches like movies, recipes or songs that allow you to explore different options.
SEO Practice
The main reason behind using SEO is to improve the site’s ranking in an organic way. That means, once a site is being ranked by the help of SEO it would ensure a free flow of traffic for months after months without any kinds of further expenditure. To do so, one must master several SEO practices. They are:
Niche research:
The research conducted to understand the specific industry or market of your chosen niche is known as niche research.
Target Audience:
To find and understand the audience interested in your niche is known as target audience research. It is conducted to provide your purchasers with a more personalized and effective service.
Competitors research:
All the studies conducted to determine the weakness and strength of competitors are included under this category. It helps to gain an edge by formulating refined strategies.
Keyword Research:
Keyword research is all about finding the words that have the biggest probability of being used by your potential visitors.
Content Creation and Optimization:
Content Creation is basically to create content that is helpful and interesting for your potential visitors. On the other hand, optimization means to make sure your content is easily findable.
Technical Optimization:
The regular maintenance of your website to ensure that it loads quickly and works smoothly on all devices is known as technical optimization.
Link Building:
Link building is like the establishment of a bridge between your website and another one. It can be done both internally and externally. Internal linking helps to hold the traffic within your website while external linking guides your traffic to another website.
Factors Search Engine Considers while Ranking
SEO is a very broad field, and it depends on many factors. In simple words, there are many signals that influence the working method of SEO. To understand how SEO works it is important to have an idea about the Google ranking mechanism:
- User-Intent:
If you search about “How to tie your shoelaces”; then you do not want to see websites talking about “Different types of shoes”. This is one of the key factors that search engines consider while ranking websites on SERPs. The websites fulfilling the better user intent would rank higher compared to the websites which are not that relevant.
- Spam:
Any websites that are not that much trusted, are considered as spam. These types of websites are not favored by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Bing etc.
- Helpful content /EAT:
The main purpose of searching any queries is to get the solution. If any content is not helpful and relevant to the query then it is not an ideal content.
- Product review:
The websites with better product reviews are ranked higher in the search engines. That’s why it is important to optimize products in order to gain more traffic.
- Authority:
It mainly depends on the influence of the domain of your website. Besides, Google also considers unique content and linking while determining the authority of the websites.
- Organization:
Websites with a better content organization are preferred more.That’s why search engines always prioritize organization of content as one of the key factors when ranking.
- Utility:
The utility of the website and how the visitors are benefiting from it, is also a key factor. The more advantages your website holds for your visitors, the better it will get ranked.
SEO working Mechanism
SEO is just a medium to convey visitors to your website. That’s why, before implementing SEO on your website, it is important to create a beneficial website. This is the first and foremost vital factor to consider before implementing SEO.
Google and other search engines have many algorithms that they consider while ranking websites. SEO helps to crack these algorithms and rank your site. Apart from the conventional algorithms, search engines also focus on factors like indexing, loading speed and user experience.
Let’s have a clear idea about how SEO triggers the algorithms to make your sites visible:
Search Engine Knowledge
SEO experts need to have a wide knowledge about how Search Engine responds to the user queries. Mainly they performs these four consecutive stages during any search:
- Crawling: Search engines find all web pages with the help of crawlers. These crawlers follow different links and sitemaps to find out the sites.
- Rendering: After the crawlers have found the web pages, they try to figure out the look of the website using coding languages like HTML, JavaScript and CSS.
- Indexing: After having an idea about the look of the pages, the next job of them is to note down important details of that site on their database.
- Ranking: Finally, based on the data collected, search engines use their algorithms to find out which site is of top quality and more relevant to the site and rank them accordingly.
Researching
This is an important part ensures that relevant contents are provided to the appropriate visitors. Some of the important types of research are:
- Audience Research: This research is mainly focused on understanding the demand, needs and questions of the targeted audience.
- Keyword Research: This type of research gives an idea about what exact terms people are using to search for a particular piece of information. It also gives an idea about how difficult it would be to rank that keyword or term.
- Competitor’s Research: As the name suggests, this is the research on your competitors. To find out the shortage and gap in your competitor’s content is the main point of this research.
- Website Research: This research is done to find out the defects and limitations of the website which are preventing it from ranking.
- SERP Research: This research helps to find out how search engines are ranking sites and how you can trigger that algorithm to rank your site.
Strategies
SEO is without any doubt a long-term process. That’s why it is important to make long term plannings and strategies to get the maximum benefits. Proper groundwork would also ensure correct implementation of SEO. Your roadmap should look something like this:
- Gaining knowledge about targeted audience demands and queries.
- Doing keyword research to find out the best possible way to rank your site easily.
- On-Page optimization of your site that includes enhancing meta tags, headings, images, looks and quality.
- Performing technical SEO by optimizing site speed, framework and other technical factors.
- Creating high quality and helpful content that fulfills user needs.
- Building both external and internal links to drive more traffic.
- Regular monitoring and optimization to cope up with ever changing SEO techniques.
Analysis and Maintenance
SEO is not constant; it is changing every day. With more advancement of search engines and their algorithms, the techniques of SEO are also changing. That’s why it is needed to cope with these changes to maintain the traffic. Otherwise, there is a possibility of downgrade of the previously achieved visits.
Apart from this, analysis of your site is significant. It gives you an understanding about which content of yours is getting more visits. In this way, the preferred choices of your targeted audience can be known. Therefore a better engaging and traffic driving content can be produced.
Linking in SEO
Linking is basically the process of connecting one webpage with another. This is done by the help of hyperlink which is simply known as link. The main benefit of links is that it helps the visitors to easily navigate from one page to another. As a result, traffic can easily be transmitted between pages.
Normally in SEO, we mostly talk about two types of linking. One is external linking, and another is internal linking. However, in this guide, we will provide you with the basic knowledge of all types of linking so that you can use them to influence your ranking.
Types of linking
- Internal Linking: The linking between pages of the same website is known as internal linking. It helps to drive traffic from one page to another within the same site.
- External Linking: The linking between one website with another is known as external linking. It helps to transfer engagement from one website to another.
- Backlinks: This is also the linking between two separate websites. It is one of the most prominent types of linking in SEO. It acts as an indicator of a particular website’s authority and dominance.
- Anchor Text Link: The link that can be redirected by clicking any words or phrases is known as anchor text link. It is an easy medium to navigate between pages of the same or different sites.
- Nofollow Link: This link is mainly used to prevent spamming. With the help of this link, search engines get instructions not to redirect any authority to the provided link.
External Linking vs Backlinking
Both types of linking are quite similar as they both focus on capturing attention from external websites. However, they have a significant amount of difference in between them which are given below:
External Linking:
- It is an outgoing type of linking.
- It means that an external link would drive your visitors from your website to another external website.
- It is mainly used for providing references, sources and more information.
- It doesn’t actively help in SEO.
Backlinking:
- It is an incoming type of linking.
- It means that external links would drive traffic from other websites to yours.
- It acts as an indicator of trust and popularity.
- It actively helps in SEO.
Role of Link in SEO
Links have always played a part in SEO. Previously, Google and other search engines used to consider linking as one of the main factors while ranking on SERPs. But the problem that arose because of it is that websites with excessive links started to develop. It used to provide a very bad user experience.
That’s why, the influence of linking also reduced a lot from the old time. However still now, linking can be used as an effective means of Search Engine Optimization, if it is used properly within limits.
It is important to remember that the main purpose of linking is to make the navigation easier and quicker. With this goal, linking should be done. Any type of linking that does not fulfill the user intent and can bring hassles for the users should be avoided.
Google, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo etc. are very cautious about preventing spam and fraud. That’s why linking should be done carefully otherwise it can leave a negative impact on the overall ranking of the site.
Role of Content in SEO
The main reason for using SEO is to showcase the helpful content that has been provided on the website. That’s why it is so important to create high quality and user-friendly content to hold the driven traffic and to encourage them to visit the site again.
In simple words, the success rate of SEO directly depends on the quality of the content. If the content is of top-notch quality fulfilling the user intent, then it would automatically enhance the SEO process.
Whenever anyone searches anything on search engines, then there are thousands of possible results that Google can provide, but have you ever thought how the search engine always provides you with results that are related to your query?
It’s because search engines like Google, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo etc. match the query with every possible website in their database. Those websites which fulfill the intent of the query in the best possible way get to rank higher. From this point of view, you can get an idea that it’s not only important to create engaging content but also those contents that help to solve the query of the user.
Types of Content and how they influence SEO
Anything that we see on a website is its content. It can be a video, image, animation or text. All these contents are mostly used together to create an engaging and traffic driven website.
However, it is not necessary to have all these contents together in a website to make it search engine optimized. The content staying separately can influence the traffic of a website.
For example, in the case of a blogging website only text content is present, on the other hand in case of websites like YouTube or Spotify focus remains on videos and audio content respectively. Again, on websites like Facebook and Instagram, all forms of content are getting similar levels of focus.
Let’s have a quick look on how different type of contents influence SEO:
- Text Content:
Articles and Blog Posts mainly comprise this type of content. This type of content influences SEO by providing the users with information, opinions and tutorials.
- Video Content:
This type of content includes different types of videos. The sole purpose of this content is like text content; however, they are more effective in grabbing the attention of visitors.
- Image Content:
As the name suggests, this type of content is related to images. They are the second most largely used content in a website. Besides that, image content can externally drive traffic, if one can use “alt text” effectively to rank their image on the image section of Google and other search engines.
- Animated Content:
This is a comparatively new type of content, but it is now being used more and more by website developers. The best part of this content is its capability to hold the visitors on the website. The help of eye-catching and hooking animation makes it easier.
- Interactive Content:
This is one of the most important yet underrated types of content in the case of SEO. This type of content comprises different quizzes, polls and interactive communication mediums. It helps to create a sense of interconnectivity by increasing engagement significantly.
- Audio Content:
This type of content is not used often in influencing SEO; but correct use of them can help to enhance the traffic on your website.
Each of these types of content have their own benefits. However, to get the maximum advantage from SEO in 2024, it is suggested to make the proper use of all these sorts of content.
How to create High Quality Content
- Research:
The first step to creating high-quality content is the detailed research of your niche, competitors and targeted audience. The more knowledge you would gather about these fundamentals, the better content you would be able to generate.
- User-Intent:
This is the most important factor that should be considered while writing a content. If you don’t fulfill the user intent of your visitors, then they won’t bother to visit your website again.
- Keywords:
The perfect use of relevant keywords is necessary to make the crawling of Google easier. If unrelated and excessive keywords are used, then it is most likely to be considered a scam by search engines.
- Copywriting:
One of the most underrated aspects which is often overlooked by content creators is copywriting. It is the ultimate way to hook your traffic and channel it to an even bigger source. However, the appropriate use of it can be a challenge.
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