What is Search Engine Optimization(SEO) in 2024? Best Practices

what is SEO, ways to improve it- everything about SEO?, Since you have visited here already, you must have some shallow knowledge about what SEO stands for and what is very important for websites, blogs, content, etc. But you know what since you have come so far, why don’t you grab some extra knowledge before you focus on your business after this?

In this article, I’ll write about:

What is SEO?
Why is it important for your online business?
When to use SEO?
Where to put the SEO?
Ways to improve your SEO?
And the best SEO Plugins for your blogs.

Note: Before you read this article, I must inform you that the content below might have some affiliate links that can be useful for you and whenever you choose to use it, I get a small amount of commission that helps me to run this site.

What is SEO(Search Engine Optimization)?

Its function is to check the content relevance, quality of the content, link popularity, and User search query interface, which eventually shows your blogs to an audience and shows good content.

A good score on SEO content can make the website, blogs, and page more easily available, and findable, which eventually shows on the top of the user search results because the search engines rank good SEO content better than other weak SEO content.

If your content can be entered in the top 10 contents that pop up whenever someone searches for the topics that you wrote then you will have more traffic which eventually means more revenue. It’s just a process of increasing the quality and the website traffic without paid ads.

Why is it important for your online business?

Being exposed to your brand or your online business to more people whom you can target with just a few words might mean a lot for brand awareness and more sales or more audience to the solution that you offer online. It can bring your business more revenue without spending a big budget or doing paid ads.

1. Organic traffic for your website:-

One of the best ways to increase your website traffic is through SEO optimization.
The audience that we got from the Google search results is the organic traffic. To gain this organic traffic, you need to optimize your website content properly. The main aim is to make Google recognize your website content so that the searcher can find the relevant answers to the questions they are asking online.

2. Brand Awareness

With SEO, your websites can get more visibility if they can provide solutions or ideas to the queries that are asked by the searcher. With this, your brand awareness can go up to another level. You should keep in mind to make people see what your website is about and what it stands for.

3. User experience

User experience is one of the most important parts that you need to keep in mind when making your content. Since the number of mobile users in the last few years has increased, don’t forget to optimize your website’s structure and contents to keep a better user experience. even if your content is looking great on the PC, it may not look that great on other devices because of changes in the font style, size, etc. This might mean a great loss to your business since half of the audience nowadays is mobile- users.

4. Cost-effectiveness

SEO marketing can bring more results without actually spending additional money on advertising in the long run. Investing time and money in a good SEO strategy will make your website more visible. It can continue to bring high-quality traffic to your site over time with the target audience in your industry. Since SEO doesn’t expire, SEO can make a big return on investments(ROI).

SEO is worth investing in learning. There are a lot of SEO courses on different sites on both paid and unpaid bases.

5. Ahead of the competition

Making a good strategy of SEO optimization for running the website is an edge over your competitors. If you continue to use SEO for a target audience that your competitors don’t rank then you can bring in the audience to your websites which eventually leads to more sales and more revenue.

6. Building Trust;-

If you want to continue to create a long-lasting relationship with your customers, then you need to create a certain trust to work with them further on the line. To gain this trust, you need to optimize and appear at the top of search results which increases your visibility among the searchers which are often seen as more credible and trustworthy by users.

This way people can understand what you are. and what you stand for.

When to use SEO?

If you have a personal or business website that you wish to grow and gain more customers. Then you have to maintain good visibility points to the searcher, which means when you wish your content to be at the top of the search results about a certain topic then you can use SEO. But don’t forget that it’s not an overnight process, it’ll take to get results but will be worth it in the long run for your business.

Where to put the SEO?

Somehow you have reached till now but where should you put this SEO? Well there are some places that you can put it such as URLs, title of the Page, Keyword meta descriptions, Body contents, Header elements, Alt Texts, File Name, Links, etc

Ways to improve your SEO?

Some of the ways that I use to improve my SEO are writing in simple words in a way that you would understand down below:

1. Improve website loading speed

When a searcher expects their answer to your content and when they tap to enter your websites, if your website loads slowly then it might make the new customers choose other sites for their answers which eventually can bring down your Google ranking. Keeping an excellent loading site is very important to maintain your website at the top of page 1.

You can choose Google’s page speed insights or Semrush to check your website loading speeds.

You can increase your loading speed with SEO by opting:

Optimize and compress your images
Optimize your caching
Minimise javascript, CSS, HTML
Auditing your sites
Check your hosting and upgrade your hosting
Reduce your redirects
Leveraging CDN
Reduce third-party unnecessary plugins.

2. Use site links

Sitelinks are links that appear under the search results or in a page which eventually leads to other pages or sections of the pages.

With site links, the user can see the relevant answers they are looking for and jump right into it. With it, your websites can also level up the visibility in the search results which gives you an edge over your competitors.

3. Target Brand New Keywords

Why are you using SEO? Because you want to reach or stay at the top of the results then why is it so hard for some keywords to reach even a certain position? Well, that’s because the older the keyword, more the popular it is which means that many more sites or bloggers are trying to rank at that particular keyword. So finding a keyword that’s valid and under your niche with low competition is the best way to rank. Which eventually leads to ranking on other related keywords too.

4. Get Backlinks

A backlink is when a website puts a link in its content which leads to another website or blog.

Getting backlinks from popular websites or many mid-websites can bring more traffic and help you rank on your targeted keywords. Most of the popular websites are getting buttloads of backlinks from many small websites so if you want to get some backlinks that are gonna help you to rank and increase your traffic, there are some ways such as writing guests posts outreach, Guest comment outreach, directory listings, Wikipedia citations.

5. Publish Relevant, Authoritative Content

Always try to publish content that is perfectly relevant to your targeted audience and keywords so that whenever the user types their questions, they can access your content. Even though you have perfect, good-quality content, if you don’t provide good content people won’t click it.

6. Refresh Your Content Regularly

As new software is coming into the market, it’s a very good strategy to update the content that you have already published. With this, you can prevent security threats, improve website SEO, able to create relevance with new users which increases traffic and increases your search results ranking.

7. Metadata

Meta Data includes page titles, meta descriptions, keywords, and headings that are on the page which can help your content to rank on the search results.

Page titles or meta titles are the ones that appear when you type a particular topic in the search engine. It needs to match as far as it can with the user’s questions.

Meta descriptions are like a summary that allows you to write about the content that you wish to upload and they can attract users more efficiently because they can give a brief idea about what your page is about and what it can give them.

You can improve other areas like URLs, Headers Tags, and Using Alt tags when you upload an image in your content by describing the image. It helps the search engine to find your page more easily.

8. Always maintain a kind and friendly environment.

Do I catch you in shock when I say this? well, don’t. whenever new users see your content and get some help from it, that means you help them in one way or another. If you keep a clear atmosphere where you promise to answer whenever they have a problem on the topics that you have ideas. Simply being kind, and unbiased and helping people will eventually keep the audience connected with you in the long run.

An example of being nice in your content: Even when you redirect them to other sites or pages, instead of just putting the URLs, try writing out the name of the destination.

9. Optimize for mobile and tablet users

According to reports, nearly 60% of all online searchers come from mobiles and some from tablets. So your websites and content need to optimize for mobile and tablets. So always optimize your images and bold texts, to make faster loading on mobile devices.

The best SEO Plugins for Beginners and for those who have budgets:

Plugins	Features	Pricing
Yoast SEO	It helps you to optimize your on-page SEO very easily and is user-friendly for newbies.	It has both free and paid plans. Paid plans Yoast SEO Premium start from $99/year.
Semrush	Keyword Research, page SEO, Competitor analysis, Content Marketing,Rank tracking, Local SEO, Link Management, Content optimization, Market analysis, Website monetization, etc.	PRO	GURU	BUSINESS
Semrush		$208.8/Monthly	$416.66/Monthly	$416.66/monthly
Rank Math	Search console, Schema, Local SEO and Knowledge graph, Image SEO, Site map, etc.	Pro	Business	Agency
Rank Math		$5.75 / month	$19.08 / month	$45.75 / month

If you enjoy this article, Please read my other blogs.

How To Grow Your Pinterest Business? Read Now

10 Easy Steps to Start a blog and Start earning in 2024. Read now