SEO? What really is that?

SEO. It is almost like a household word among digital marketers nowadays. But, what exactly is it?

I will try to explain as best as I can to help you understand more about SEO or in full, Search Engine Optimization.

From the name itself, you can almost guess what it is, right? It is almost like what it sounds, but, it is a little bit more complex.

In simple terms, SEO is as it is. We optimize websites to get the search engines (in most cases Google) to favor that website over others.

To explain further, SEO is a set of initiatives done to a website to improve the chance for the website to appear higher on the Search Engine Result Page (SERP). There are a lot of factors to improve this and SEO professionals usually use the Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T) factors to improve the website which are believed to be the factors taken by Google for their search ranking.

Why do we do this? According to Firstpage.com’s research, in 2024, the website that appears at the top of the SERP has more than double the clicks from the second-ranked and more than 20 times than the one on rank 10. Just imagine how advantageous it is to be ranking at the top of the SERP and how many potential clients you would have!

In essence, SEO is one of the most effective digital marketing tactics you can use to boost sales, establish trust, raise brand awareness, and outperform your competitors. Because you build trust with them, a strong SEO foundation not only brings in new business but also enables you to strengthen your existing clientele.

But how does one do that I hear you ask? I will answer that in the most SEO way ever – it depends.

Alright, to start, we should know that SEO has 3 core components or pillars and you can specialize in either one of them. These components are the way we break down which initiatives should be focused on first by doing website audits for each of the verticals.

From the name itself, you could probably expect which part of the website that this is related to. Basically, On-Page is a component for everything that is on the page and related to the contents on the front end and/or back end.

For front-end stuff, these are the website headings, contents, images, anchor texts, and so on. These are stuff that will affect your website based on the keywords that we have on it.

For backend stuff, meta tags, image alternate texts, internal links, etc. These are stuff that need to be done through the source codes of the website also utilizing the keywords that are being targeted.

Off-page SEO is things that we have minimal control over. These are things that are off the website that we own. This is mostly related to the backlinks that are pointing to pages on our website. Backlinks are links from other websites to our website.

This could be a dual-edge blade as it can either help boost our website or drag us down. So we need to carefully monitor each and every one of the backlinks that are pointing to our website.

This part is where you are a bit of a web developer and server administrator. Why did I say that? In Technical SEO we would look into the technical aspects of the website – page load speed, mobile friendliness, multi-language declaration, and more.

Google recommends that a website be fully loaded in under 2 seconds on desktop and 3.4 seconds on mobile. Technical SEO should aim to get as close to the recommended speed as possible.

This is even more important as research by Gartner in 2020 estimated that 80% of B2B Sales Interactions will be done over Digital Channels by 2025. According to research by Statista in 2023 66% of orders are through mobile which gives advantage to mobile friendly websites.

SEO is a crucial tool in your digital marketing toolkit. It helps you improve your online visibility, attract more visitors, and ultimately grow your business. Start with the basics and gradually delve deeper into the world of SEO.