SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is one of the most essential terms nowadays. Do you use Google? If yes, how often did you click on the first link that appeared in the result page?
When it comes to SEO, the majority of individuals are concerned about RANKING. It is the art and science of getting pages to rank higher in search engines such as Google, bing, Baidu, and the others. Hence, it attracts more relevant traffic.
In this digitized world when everything is getting online and everyone has overloaded information, the SEO is getting crucial to stand out your website and business. According to statcounter,
Google still holds the highest Search Engine Market Share until February 2022 which is 92.01% as shown in Figure 1.
Google ranking systems will sort through hundreds of billions of webpages in the search index to find the most relevant and useful results. Consequently, we need to create the best webpage to fulfill the Google Search Algorithms in order to be ranked out among the other webpages.
So, what are the roles of SEO playing in Google Search Algorithms? On top of that, let’s explore the importance of SEO!
The Importance of SEO
#1 Users normally click the top results on the first page
Do you know that 75% of internet users never scrolled past the first page of search results? This is the reason why SEO is important to get on that first page to increase the website visibility!
#2 High Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
According to the research, 31.37% of people will click the first result and less than 2% will click the results on the later page. It’s disappointing when the webpage designed is ranked on a later page and buried in thousands of websites.
This is the reason why SEO sets the seal on a high click through rate webpage, yielding more opportunities in digital marketing. When more people could reach your webpage, certainly improving brand awareness.
#3 Better Cost Management
Here comes a situation, when we are looking for some information on a search engine, most of the people would normally ignore the advertisement websites.
Yes, we can pay for advertisements to make the website on the top page, yet 70% and 80% of users completely ignore paid advertisements according to 80 SEO Statistics by https://www.smamarketing.net/blog/80-seo-statistics.
So, SEO is a very good way to promote your website 24/7 without costing a huge amount of money as what we need is only good content and preparing a quality website based on SEO algorithms. Most importantly, it saves a lot on advertising!
#4 Good Percentage of Conversion Rate
Why being #Number1 is important?
We always look up to those getting number one and top qualifications, admitting their strengths. The same goes to a website. When your website is ranking on the top page without advertising, it brings better trust and boost credibility.
People trust more as Google will only rank the most relevant, trustworthy, and qualified website on the first page for those who searched for the information. So, they will take consideration and actions based on your website.
#5 Better User Experience
For a website to be ranked on a first page, it sure is updated so that people can get the accurate information. The website has to be designed pleasantly with updated information, so the quality of the website is improving from time to time.
In addition, fast-loading is one of the main needs in this fast-paced era. SEO is urging optimisation of websites in many aspects, including speed optimisation which is also bringing better experience for users.
The SEO Mindset
It is critical to understand how Google works if we want to improve our Google ranking. Referring back to what Google says on their website is the most dependable source for understanding this.
According to https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/algorithms/, Google shares How Search algorithms work. Let’s go over each one one by one.
#1 Meaning of your Query
“The intent behind every query”. Understanding intent is fundamentally about understanding language and is a critical aspect of Search.
For instance, when we are searching for “who is malaysia pm”, the top result showing will be the answer to match the query. You will notice that even though we did not type ‘Ismail Sabri’ in our search bar, all the top search results show ‘Ismail Sabri’ in the content.
Other than that, even if we search for ‘who’ and ‘pm,’ the top search result pages will not necessarily contain these two keywords. This demonstrates that Google is attempting to comprehend our query rather than focusing solely on the keyword we type into the search bar.
As a result, it’s critical to figure out what kind of query we’re trying to answer before we start creating content.
#2 Relevance
Next, did you realize that when we search for some information, if a web page contains the same keywords as your search query, or if they appear in the headings or body of text, the information is more likely to be relevant?
In consequence, we would normally click on the few links that seem to have the answers we want on the first page when we notice they contain our keywords.
Beyond simple keyword matching, Google uses aggregated and anonymized interaction data to assess whether search results are relevant to queries. Google converts the information into signals that aid our machine-learning technologies in determining relevance.
#3 Quality of Content
Content is extremely important in SEO, not only providing a quality website of yours, it would also let Google make your website a reliable source and rank it high. There are some tips/factors given by Google on how to define a reliable resource, which is
- Expertise (It means the content is informative, unique, attractive, etc.),
- Authoritativeness(The page has inbound link from high authoritative website, link etc.), and
- Trustworthiness (The website has wide online visibility, long history and the content is trustworthy, etc.).
#4 Usability of Web Pages
Then, Google evaluates whether webpages are easy to use. For example,
- Does the webpage work well on different devices types and sizes as well?
- Or how long is the time taken needed to load the page?
All these mobile-friendly, fast loading, appear correctly in different browsers, and security aspects are considered. Overall, Google will only promote the “best of everything” webpage for the users.
#5 Context and Setting
Information such as your location, past Search history and Search settings all help Google to tailor the results to what is the most useful and relevant information at that moment. Google interprets the country and location to deliver content relevant for the users.
SUMMARY: 3 Main Factors Affecting SEO
Generally, we may easily conclude from the information provided by Google that:
#1 Content is King
It is essential to have good quality, unique and informative content. In terms of SEO, the content lengths, keywords, pages per session, and many other conditions have to be considered.
#2 Backlink is Queen
A website must be authoritative, which implies it receives many referrals from other websites and serves as a resource center. In term of SEO, total referring domains, total backlinks, total referring IPs, it is all about authoritativeness that can boost credibility of your webpages.
#3 Usability is Jack
Steve Krug once said,
“Usability is about people and how they understand and use things, not about technology”.
When we please the users with an easy to use, informative and convenient website, we win by gaining their heart and this is what Google wants for SEO.
