SEO over the years has become a popular thing that people know they have to do to appear at the top of search results, but I guess not everyone knows what it actually entails. SEO became a thing when Larry Page and Sergey Brin started building Google back in 1997-1998, which is now the most dominant and recognised search engine in the world.
SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is the process of optimising your online content, so search engines can crawl and index pages from your website in search results, for a particular keyword, phrase or question. Traditionally, SEO had a focus on websites however, the practice or craft can be replicated across video platforms, social media, eCommerce and apps. Basically, any platform that has a search engine. People often refer to SEO as a digital channel, however, I prefer to refer to it as a craft because you can do SEO on Amazon, YouTube and so on.
A more updated phrase coming into the mix is Organic Optimisation. This encompasses what SEO has evolved to be in 2020 – 2021 where it goes beyond the website. Over the years search engines have evolved and developed to provide the most useful and efficient search experience to a user. So Google’s algorithm will rank websites based on the relevance and quality of a webpage for a user. The various aspects of what Google assess is what we call a ranking factor.
Three Pillars of SEO
There are three key pillars of SEO, which underpin what SEO involves.
30% Technical Accessibility (Authority)
This is the ability of a robot to crawl and index the website. This takes into account the tech behind how the website is built so it can be read and understood by a robot and provides a good user experience.
30% Content Optimisation (Relevance)
This is the process of making sure content is written in a way that’s relevant to how your target audience would search around your niche to maximise the reach to the largest possible target audience. This involves doing keyword research. and ensure the copy, titles and metadata include these keywords, phrases and questions users would use. This also includes adding relevant tags and links.
40% Off-Page Optimisation (Trust)
This involves building authority back to the website by doing actions outside of the website. This includes content marketing campaigns, digital PR and influencer marketing. This is important as search engines such as Google take into account what other sites are referencing yours, and the quality of these sites as a ranking factor. As Google’s ambition is to serve the users the best search result, the more references (or backlinks) you have the more credible your site appears. Similarly, if you create content and push this on social media the more people share this (especially if it includes a link) also sends authoritative signals to search engines. This exercise is also useful to increase brand awareness and add credibility to your SEO campaigns.
