SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

What Is SEO?

SEO stands for search engine optimization. SEO is the process of taking steps to help a website or piece of content rank higher on Google. To make it a bit simpler, search engine optimization means taking a piece of online content and optimizing it so search engines like Google show it towards the top of the page when someone searches for something.

Core Elements of SEO: On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO

There are two equally important paths:

On-page SEO is about building content to improve your rankings. This comes down to incorporating keywords into your pages and content, writing high-quality content regularly, making sure your metatags and titles are keyword-rich and well-written, among other factors.

Off-page SEO is the optimization happening off of your website itself, such as earning backlinks. This part of the equation involves building relationships and creating content people want to share. Though it takes a lot of legwork, it’s integral to SEO success.

SEO Strategies: Black Hat Vs. White Hat

When it comes to SEO, going for quick gains is often referred to as “black hat SEO.” People who implement black hat SEO tend to use sneaky tactics like keyword stuffing and link scraping to rank quickly. It might work for the short-term and get you some traffic to your site, but after a while, Google ends up penalizing and even blacklisting your site so you’ll never rank. On the other hand, white hat SEO is the way to build a sustainable online business. If you do SEO this way, you’ll focus on your human audience.

How does SEO work?

Search engines such as Google use an algorithm or set of rules to determine what pages to show for any given query. These algorithms have evolved to be extremely complex, and take into account hundreds or even thousands of different ranking factors to determine the rankings of their SERPs. However, there are three core metrics that search engines evaluate to determine the quality of a site and how it should rank:

• Links - Links from other websites play a key role in determining the ranking of a site in Google and other search engines. The reason being, a link can be seen as a vote of quality from other websites, since website owners are unlikely to link to other sites that are of poor quality. Sites that acquire links from many other sites gain authority (called "PageRank" in Google) in the eyes of search engines, especially if the sites that are linking to them are themselves authoritative.

• Content - In addition to looking at links, search engines also analyze the content of a webpage to determine if it would be relevant for any given search query. A large part of SEO is in creating content that is targeted towards the keywords that search engines' users are searching for.

• Page structure - The third core component of SEO is page structure. Because webpages are written in HTML, how the HTML code is structured can impact a search engine’s ability to evaluate a page. Including relevant keywords in the title, URL, and headers of the page and making sure that a site is crawlable are actions that site owners can take to improve the SEO of their site.

The search engine optimization process involves optimizing each of these core components of search engine algorithms in order to rank higher in the search results.

CONCLUSION:

Now that you’re familiar with SEO, you can work to improve your site’s ranking and visibility. The more valuable your content is to your audience and the more you optimize the more technical aspects of your site the better your results will be. Got some applications of data science that we didn't list? Share them with us in the comments. Got some more info about SEO that we didn't list? Share them with us in the comments.

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