SEO is an abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization. The purpose of SEO is to appear in a favorable manner on search engines and rank as high as possible in their search results.
Why you should work on search engine optimization
Let’s do a little thought experiment. Visualize how your homepage looks. Is it your website that comes to mind? If so, you’re off track; your actual homepage is: https://www.google.com/.
The majority of visitors come to your website through a search on Google, including repeat visitors. People are so accustomed to the speed and efficiency of search engines today that they prefer to Google your website rather than manually enter the entire website address (URL). They are so accustomed to Googling what they are looking for that for several years, “Google” was one of the top ten most searched keywords on Google…
It’s also primarily about the search engine Google, not competitors like Bing or DuckDuckGo. Currently, Google holds a whopping 93.68% of the search engine market in Sweden (91.43% globally).
So, why is SEO so important? The answer is simple – if you’re not visible on Google, you don’t exist.
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization can be divided into three fundamental pillars: On-page, off-page, and technical SEO. All three components play a crucial role in how well your site ranks and appears.
On-page SEO is about what you do on your website. The most important aspect of SEO is to have high-quality text, images, and other content that visitors find interesting. If you don’t have any content, how will visitors find your page? It’s the content that search engines read and display in search results.
Quality is better than quantity. Focus on providing value to the customer, share your knowledge, and write articles or guides that help customers. What users find important and interesting, Google likes too. Avoid duplicating the same content on different parts of the website. Search engines dislike “duplicate content” and may penalize you in search results.
Off-page SEO is about everything you do outside of your website, primarily concerning backlinks. These are links from other websites that refer to your site. When other websites link to you, Google interprets it as a sign that your content is valuable. It creates trust that search engines appreciate. However, the links must come from a website that Google already trusts. Registering on link directories no longer works as an effective strategy.
Technical SEO
Today, visitors expect web pages to load quickly and be mobile-friendly. Google knows this, which is why technical SEO has become just as important as the content itself on a website for search engine optimization in recent years. Google doesn’t want to suggest pages that are broken, slow, or difficult to navigate to its users. If Google detects any of these issues on a website, the recommendation value drops, and as a consequence, the website will sink deep into the search result listings where nobody can find it.
User experience is something that Google increasingly considers in its evaluation. An example of this is that since July 2019, Google indexes all websites based on how they appear and function in mobile view. The reason for this is that the majority of searches performed on Google today are done via mobile devices.
Here are some things that can be addressed with technical SEO:
- Pages that are not mobile-responsive
- Pages that load slowly
- Pages with broken or poor code
- Pages that lack important tags (both meta tags and HTML tags)
- Links that Google cannot follow or index
- Poor handling of missing or relocated pages
Technical SEO alone cannot compensate for poor content, but good content can be negatively affected by poor technical SEO.
If you need help with SEO, contact us via the form or email below, and we will take it from there.