Table of Contents

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it means optimizing your website to rank higher on search engine results.
In simple words, search engines have some criteria or factors to rank our website, at the top of search results. So we want to optimize our website based on that and increase the traffic.

This optimization will depend on various factors, some are listed below.

Unique and quality content
Your website loading speed
Keywords volume and its difficulty
Domain Authority, etc.,

Types of SEO

There are three types of SEO

Black Hat SEO
White Hat SEO
Grey Hat SEO

What is Black-Hat SEO?

It refers to a technique that involves violating google search engine terms.

In simple words: Google has some good criteria to rank our website when we follow them in the wrong manner. It becomes Black Hat SEO.

For example:

Keyword stuffing
Content Automation
Hidden links and text
Using duplicate content
Stuffing more backlinks from different niches, etc.,

These tricks will give results in the short term, but they won’t be stable for a long time. It reduces the website’s authority and ranking.

What is White-Hat SEO?

This will vice versa to black hat SEO, which means techniques used to rank websites will follow the search engine terms and conditions.

For example:

Making original content
Proper Keyword usage on content
Relevant Meta title & description
Backlink from a relevant niche

What is Grey Hat SEO?

It combines both white-hat and black-hat SEO. This may help in some cases, but not safe like white hat techniques.

Example:

Multiple social media accounts
Automation in content / Spinning content
Buying expired domains
Buying backlinks

Now, let us see the types of SEO strategies

There are two strategies followed in SEO. One is On-Page, and the other one is Off-Page

On-Page SEO:

Process of optimizing web pages to get better results for our keywords.

In simple words,
SEO means optimizing the website for better results on search engine.

Now, on-page SEO means optimization will be done only on our web pages (i.e., changes to be made within the web pages), so it’s on-page SEO.

There are more on-page techniques involved; some are listed below

Meta Title & Description Optimization
URL optimization
Sitemap Submission etc.,

Off-Page SEO:

In this SEO, the actions are made from outside the website. (i.e., optimization will be done without making any changes on our webpage)

Off-page techniques involve Link building/backlinks.

i) Forum submission
ii) Blog commenting
iii) Profile creation
iv) Social bookmarking
v) Guest Post
vi) Q&A, etc.,

Link building will improve our website, Domain Authority (DA), and Page Authority (PA).

In some cases, Irrelevant backlinks or links from spam sites will increase the spam score of our website which will reduce the site’s performance. So practice quality link building.

We have to follow both the on-page and off-page techniques to perform well.

Check the below Do’s and Don’t in SEO

SEO vs. SEM

Most of them will confuse SEO with SEM. Now let’s discuss that.

Both SEO and SEM are focused on getting traffic and visibility to the website, but the thing is how they are different.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing)

It is a form of online marketing which increase the website traffic and visibility in SERP (search engine results page) through organic way (SEO) and paid advertising (PPC & others)

In simple words,
We increase our website traffic and visibility through non-paid (SEO) and Paid (PPC) Ways.

SEO and PPC (pay-per-click) come under the SEM category

Now, let’s see about the difference between SEO and PPC

The main difference is time, how long it took to show results in search engine

The SEO process will take a lot of time to show the results in search engines, especially for new sites. But with proper SEO practices and patience will give better results.

But in PPC, the results will be much faster. You can run ads and get results much quicker than SEO. However, this does not promise that you will see a return on your investment on the first day. In some cases, it takes months of implementing and testing to get a positive ROI.

Now see this image to understand SEO & PPC Differences.

Which one is best: SEO or PPC

Both are good enough and beneficial. It’s based on the person’s needs and budget

One should understand their needs and the following concept to choose which one to implement.

In SEO, there will be a constant change in search engine algorithms. You must look at the latest updates and work according to them.

It is a long-term process to get more reach and traffic. However a long-term strategy, but it will raise brand awareness among users. When people look at your website ranking on top search results, they will believe that the company brand is trustworthy.

The cost factor is less in SEO compared to PPC. One can spend money on hiring a content writer, or designer, spending money on SEO tools, Paid guest posts, etc.,

Time consumption will be more in SEO, because we want to analyze competitor’s strategy, user intent, UI(user-friendly design), and optimization will be done based on that.

Tip for content making
Analyze all the competitor’s websites and make content that should be unique and cover all the points from all the competitors.
This means: you are not going to copy the whole thing from them, instead take ideas from each one and make a better one.
It will help us to cover all the ideas.
If you have a good view of your blog topic, then you can provide simple and quality content on your own

But once we ranked on top search results, we no need to invest after that.
Some small changes to be made on the website in order to stable our rankings (if needed)

Lots of effort will not work in some cases, so be patient and keep an eye on search engine algorithm & how competitor works.

Now let’s come to PPC.

In PPC, the primary thing is: traffic won’t get if we stop paying for advertisements. Here, the cost factor is high. You must be careful in ROI (how much you spend on ads and how much you get returns on)

In PPC, we can target a particular audience (interests and demographics) and promote our website, so the reach will be more accurate and get potential customers compared to SEO.

(In SEO, the reach will be standard, we can’t able to target a particular audience)

PPC helps us to boost leads and sales faster than SEO.
But not all clicks will convert to sales. So in this case, one must work on targeting the correct audience and make user-friendly site

I believe that you got some ideas about it, the choice is yours.

Make a list of your targets, and then work out how to achieve them.

Comment your opinion below!

What is SEO? / Basics of SEO