By reading this article you will learn what SEO is and what it means website optimization. Maybe you've heard about this optimization thing many times and didn't understand exactly what it's about. This article is written without using specialized language, so that it can be understood by anyone.
SEO is the abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization or Search Engine Optimization. In short, it means optimization for Google. Obviously, there are many search engines, but most of them only refer to Google because it is used by 92% of people who use the internet. SEO optimization refers to all the technical configurations of a website, so that it is relevant in Google search.
SEO is about on-page content, off-site factors, and the user experience on your site. Many people think that SEO is about certain keywords put in certain places and that's it. SEO is complex and search engines look at many aspects.
To understand what SEO is, you need to understand how it works. Search engines are robots that crawl all the websites on the internet and index them. It is a kind of library of websites. It takes an X-ray of each website to understand which category to include it in. After indexing the websites in their library, search engines show users who are interested in a certain information, depending on how relevant they are to certain searches.
For example, if someone searches Google for a mechanic in Brașov, Google looks in its library of sites, in the mechanics category, and displays the most relevant result. The site with the best SEO optimization, will appear first in the results and the other sites will follow it, depending on relevance. Google being a robot, does not understand the text in the same way as a human and then has its own criteria that must be met, to consider something relevant. Understanding what Google wants to see, lies in making a perfectly SEO optimized site, which is in the first results. In very competitive fields of activity, the difference between a perfect SEO optimized site and a good one, lies in the small details.
Because search engines improve from year to year, they change the criteria they look at to consider a site relevant for certain searches. Google constantly makes minor changes to the algorithm, and about twice a year, they make major changes. Depending on the competitiveness, SEO optimization is a job of 2-3 months or a few years. If you have a company that offers services, in a very small town, you can reach the first place in 2-3 months. If you are in a very competitive field and operate on a national scale, it will take about 2-3 years to reach the first place. Google appreciates quality content and sites that are constantly updated.
SEO optimization is very important for any website because it attracts new visitors and can increase sales. The fact that you have created a website, doesn't help you grow your business much, because if it's not optimized, no one will find it when searching for services or products similar to what you have to offer. An unoptimized site is on the last pages of Google and sometimes may not appear at all.
Nowadays, search engine optimization is a necessity. A website that is not optimized has no point in existing. In fact, statistics show that 90.63% of websites do not have organic traffic from Google, according to a study by Ahref’s, on a billion websites. These are some scary statistics that should make you think very seriously about the future of your company online. Many people don't know what SEO is and completely ignore it.
SEO is important because in Romania, most people have access to the internet and search for services and products online. The number of people using the internet is constantly growing, which means that your website can be a very important sales channel.
Seeing this image you probably think that SEM is better than SEO. Keep in mind that paid ads are quite expensive and you don't always get your investment back. Also, when you stop paying, your site will no longer be displayed. For organic results you don't pay anything to Google to have your site displayed in the first position, but it should be noted that there are quite high costs to get there. Statistics show that those who have completed an SEO campaign have always recovered their investment. Before you start SEO optimization, you need to have some realistic estimates of time and budget, because if you interrupt the SEO campaign, you have lost all your time and money.
Statistics show that around 60% of people click on Google ads. At BRO Media we recommend all clients to start both SEO and SEM because used together they are more effective. The advantages of starting an SEM campaign are that you get results much faster than with SEO, but they don't always bring the desired results. The advantage of SEO is that once you reach the first position, you stay there and if you don't pay anything anymore. Obviously, from the first position you can only go down, so if competitors invest in SEO, it is possible that your site will no longer be in the first position. All large sites in Romania constantly invest in SEO because falling from the first place can seriously affect the business. The first positions in Google take about 70-80% of the traffic volume.
SEO is influenced by many aspects related to the content of the site, the user experience and things external to the site. Google values fresh content and sites that are fast on a computer or phone. Below is a list of the top 5 things that influence SEO.
Each site has authority that is rated from 1 to 100. A recently created site will start with an authority of 1 and to be at the top of searches, it must compete for keywords with very low competitiveness. It is impossible for a new site to appear in front of an old site on searches with high competitiveness. For example, if you created a site today and sell electronics, don't expect to be fighting with Emag and Flanco in 2-3 months, because you have no chance. Maybe if you work very hard for 3-4 years, you will end up competing with them in the Google rankings. Authority is a rather complex thing and is influenced by many factors. The most important factors are the age of the site and the quality of the content.
On-page SEO means the structure of the site and how the content is arranged on the page. This is where the quantity and quality of the content and how it is structured matter. Quality content answers all questions and has a conclusion at the end. Service pages should be as detailed as possible and all the content on the site should be about a specific service. On-page SEO also includes site speed and user experience on your site. Internal links also matter a lot to show Google what your site is about and which are the most important pages of the site.
Google started as a search engine, which answers your questions and gives you the information you are looking for. Many people forget this and think that websites are only for promoting the company, without providing free information, which Google appreciates. To increase the authority of the site in front of search engines, your site must provide quality answers to users' questions. If you do not have a blog section where you can write articles that answer people's questions, it is harder to be in the top positions in search engines. Google appreciates sites that have a lot of quality content and are updated frequently.
Although it's ironic, to rank high on Google and get organic traffic, you have to have traffic on your site. It sounds crazy, but it makes sense. Google looks at whether your site has people visiting it and takes into account the time spent on the site.
How to get traffic if your website is on the last pages of Google?
The answer is very simple; direct traffic. You can distribute flyers, business cards or create paid promotion campaigns. It doesn't matter how you bring people to the site, but you have to find a solution to bring as many people as possible and make them spend as much time on the site as possible. Another method is to search for your personal brand on Google. If we take the example above with the electronics store, obviously you won't appear very soon on searches like "Samsung TV" or "iPhone 14". Google also takes into account whether people are searching for your brand. If you have a unique name, it is very easy to reach the first position. Regardless of the field of activity, it is easy to rise in the Google rankings even if you are initially on the last pages of results. Only hard work makes the difference.
Another important thing that search engines take into account is how many sites link to your site on their site. This gives Google a signal that what you have on your site is valuable and shared by others. Obviously, it is important that those who link to your site are from the same field of activity and have a high authority. If you have links from sites that are not in your field of activity, it will not help you. The same goes if you have links from sites that have very little authority. When it comes to links, the most important aspect is the quality, not the quantity. Due to abuses, Google has started to put less and less importance on the number of links than in previous years and it seems that the importance of links is decreasing. Nowadays it is easy to have a link from any site and that is why they have started to lose their value.
Now that we have learned what SEO is, let's see how long an SEO optimization takes. For fields of activity where there is not much competition, SEO can be done between 3 and 6 months. It should be noted that it is advisable to post on the blog at least once a month, to continue to increase authority and to be increasingly difficult to dethrone. For fields of activity with high competition, you must consider at least one year to see good results. It should be noted that once you reach a good position, it is advisable to do some maintenance, to stay there. In fields with high competition, there are always changes in the ranking, because companies invest a lot of money to be at the top.
Before you start an SEO project, you must be 100% sure that you want to see the project through to the end, otherwise you will lose money and time. The investment is not amortized in any way in the first few months, but only if you complete the project and reach the desired position. Only then does the money from SEO optimization start coming in and you start to recover your investment. If you are on the first page, but in 7th or 8th place, the chances of getting a client are close to 0, because 95% of the traffic goes to the first 3 results.
If you have a website and you know what SEO is, you need to start optimizing it, or work with someone for professional optimization. If you just have a presentation site, which is on the last pages of Google, it is as useful as a flyer. No one will know about your company, if you do not tell them directly. The goal of SEO is to bring in new customers, who have never interacted with you or your company before.
It is recommended to do SEO optimization together with paid Google campaigns. They are two things that go very well together and in a long-term strategy they are the perfect choice. If you want to do something in the short term to test your idea, it is not recommended to start SEO. First see if your idea works and when you are sure that in a few years you want to do the same activity, start SEO as well.
If you choose an agency to handle SEO optimization, make sure that the agency is in the position you want to be in. If you choose an agency that is not in the top for any service they offer, it is possible that they will not take you to the top either and by trying to save some money, you end up losing them all, with no result. Being a field where results appear after a long term, you would not want to be put in a situation where you have wasted maybe a year and have no result.
If you understand what SEO is and how much work it requires, you can start doing it yourself by reading articles about SEO or you can contact to discuss more details about your project.
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