Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the means and ways adopted by a website owner to improve the visibility of his website or webpage on a search results page. The visibility then enables the company website to be accessed more often by more number of people, improving the traffic and sales.
The process often requires continuous and consistent monitoring of the latest trend in search keywords and types of content. It requires both technical and business decisions, which may be right for a particular period of time.
SEO process is complete only with combined inputs from various departments of the organization like design, content, production and marketing teams. Various other factors play a role in SEO like comparison of content with competitor’s content, ranking algorithms of other search engines, quality of the content, presence of external referral links, interactive user interface, etc.
The process of SEO is done in the following phases:
The website owner’s business, its market requirements, competitor analysis, demand for the products or services offered and the keyword research are all analysed and well researched to decide on the methods and extent of SEO to be used.
Decisions must be made about handling and presenting the content in the website, how to build the links to the website, create presence in the social media and implementation of the technical strategies.
The decisions on the pages in the website, creating and publishing content, presentation of the products or services along with the prices and offers and other issues must be executed by the whole team. The website is then created by the team by inserting content which can be text, image or videos; providing links, creating special pages like FAQs, interactive pages like online chat interface, etc.
Monitoring of the activity of the web spiders, web traffic, rankings in the prominent search engines and various other parameters have to be done to assess if the SEO used is effective or not.
Assessment of the effective implementation and success of the strategy used is done.
Problems with the website’s operation are tackled as and when they arise. The keywords and other content must be updated according to the current SEO strategy. For example, the keyword “virus” may have had high demand at one point of time, but has currently changed to “viral infection”. This kind of changes in the content has to be done regularly to maintain the position of the website on the top in search engines.
SEO is the most important factor that determines the presence of a website on the top in search results. It also helps your target audience to find your website easily. When the user is interested in a product, say “home delivery of furniture”, he may use the same keywords to search. When your website has a high concentration and quality products of the same, the search engine may list your website on the top.
Understanding the user requirements and planning your SEO strategy accordingly can improve user experience and keep the users coming back to your website again and again. Planning and executing SEO strategies require monitoring the user requirements and habits, changing the web content according to these requirements and optimizing your website on a continuous basis.
Various tools are available to improve keyword search, simplify on-page optimization and off-page optimization and also to monitor the results or impact of the changes made.
SEO is the most important factor that determines the success of your business in the online market. It is best to allocate a full-fledged team of professionals for this task. If this is not possible, professional help is always available for your SEO needs.
