Search Engine Optimisation, What Is It?
You may have seen that we mention SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, quite a lot on social media. Now, you may also be thinking, what on earth is that? Well, we’re here to introduce SEO to you and why you should be thinking about using it to market your business.
Search Engine Optimisation is the process of work completed on web pages to make them more attractive to search engines. SEO helps your website become more likely to appear in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). SEO actions consist of a whole range of different factors, which we’ll touch on in a second. But first, we wanted to explain the basics of SEO.
What is SEO?
When you type in a query for something on a search engine they provide you with a list of results. These results are ‘organic’ results which mean they are not paid for advertisements. They are what the search engine considers as the most relevant and suitable web pages for your search query.
The results on the first page of results have all had some form of search engine optimisation take place on the page in order for it to appear, or “rank”.
SEO work can involve a whole range of elements including:
- Posting regular relevant content
- Adding meta tags
- Open Graph tags
- Including alt text on images
- URL structure
- Improving page structure and more
Now, you might have heard of some of those things, you might have not, but these are all factored in by search engines when deciding to rank your website.
Search engines read your web pages by “crawling” them. They send out bots called Spiders to crawl the web pages to find the information relevant to your search query.
Search Engine Optimisation Includes More!
This is not the be-all and end-all of SEO. The process can get more complicated and incorporates a whole range of other digital marketing tools. These techniques, when used together, will help make your website rank.
But, this is a quick insight into what search engine optimisation is and why we use it. Check our Beginners Guide to SEO to deepen your understanding.