What is Search Engine Optimisation?

Updated on: October 14, 2024

What is Search Engine Optimisation?

SEO is a set of activities that enables you (website owners) to increase your website visibility in search engines. SEO professionals optimise web pages and content for ranking higher in search engines.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) enables website owners to create and distribute high quality content that addresses buyer needs, goals and challenges. SEO (also known as Organic search) is a source of traffic acquisition for your business. Other traffic acquisition channels include paid search and social media marketing.

SEO activities include keyword research, content creation, on-page SEO, technical SEO and off-page SEO (which includes building backlinks). SEO activities improves your content ranking in search results.

Google shows your content higher in search results, if your content answers your buyer’s search query.

This blog explains ‘What is search engine optimisation?’.

Table of Contents

1. What is the importance of SEO?

2. How does Google search engine work?

3. How to implement SEO?

4. Case Study - How to get the most out of B2B SEO?

1. What is the importance of SEO?

2. How does Google Search Engine work?

Search engines need to find the page that best answers your target audience’s search query. Search engines like Google uses the following steps to discover and rank content.

 

1. Crawl - Google uses crawlers or bots to crawl the World Wide Web to find new or updated content.
2. Index - Google makes sense of your page content and stores this information in its index.
3. Results - Google finds pages that best answers your user’s search query in terms of relevance and quality. Google ranks pages that have better relevance and quality, higher in search engine results pages (SERPs)

Search engine optimisation includes on-page SEO (e.g. meta descriptions, internal links), technical SEO and off-page SEO. All three activities enable google search engine to crawl, index and rank your content.

 

When a user enters a search term into a search engine like google, they show millions of search results. Search engine algorithms determine the top organic results. The top three organic results get the highest number of clicks or website traffic.

 

Let’s say you typed ‘Organic SEO services in Sydney’ into Google search.

The below image shows the first page of google search results. One third of the page shows google ads a.k.a Google search ads. The remaining two thirds of the page shows organic search results. These results show up because the website owners have implemented Search Engine optimisation (SEO) for your website.

Search engine optimisation enables website owners to create and distribute high quality content that addresses the needs, goals and challenges of their buyer.

Paid Search ads enables you (advertisers) to display your website or landing page listing at the top of search results. Search engines like google use the pay per click advertising model. You only pay when your target audience clicks on your ad and views your web page or landing page.

Both SEO and Google Search Ads drives traffic to your website. 

 

 

3. How to implement SEO?

Create relevant content

Relevance includes answering your user’s search intent.

There are 4 main types of search intent.

1. Navigational - When users want to find a specific page (e.g. INNMCO’s SEO service page)

2. Informational - When users want to learn more about a topic (e.g. A blog post on ‘What is SEO?’)

3. Commercial - When users want to do research before making a buying decision (e.g. INNMCO vs another digital marketing agency)

4. Transactional - When users want to complete a specific action, like scheduling a SEO consultation.

Understanding search intent, starts with a deep understanding of your prospective buyer. Start with buyer research. Create content to address buyer needs, goals and challenges at different stages of your buyer’s journey.

Prototype and test your product messaging with your target market before you start to spend money on digital marketing. When a prospective buyer arrives at your business website, ask yourself:

1. What are the buyers seeking to learn when they arrive at your business website?

2. How do the buyers behave when they are at your business website?

Your buyer will better engage with your content when you find answers to the above questions. They will reward you with website clicks and leads for your business.

 

Create quality content

Google’s search quality guidelines includes the concept of EEAT.

 

 

E - Experience -  Incorporate your experience on a topic while creating content.

 

Quality content demonstrates the creator's first hand experience with the subject matter. This helps prove that what you are suggesting is tried and tested. 

In this blog on SEO content writing, I talk about my personal experiences and opinions implementing on-page seo. I provide my own examples, which conveys to google and the reader that I have first hand experience in this topic.

 

 

In another blog on, why i chose an integrated sales and martech stack, I share my experience using various marketing and sales technology platforms. I walk through the challenges that I faced.

 

I then go on to explain why I chose to re-evaluate my marketing and sales technology stack. I also go through my decision criteria while selecting an integrated marketing and sales technology stack for my business.

 

 

E - Expertise - Are you skilled on the topic? Do you have the knowledge and credentials to provide reliable information for the user?

 

Google also looks at, whether the authors have topical expertise. 

Do the authors have the knowledge, qualifications and credentials required to give reliable information? 

Expertise often overlaps with experience but they are not the same thing.

People want advice from accredited professionals.

 

In this blog on SEO content writing, I clearly outline my credentials as a digital marketing director. I provide a link to my bio page where I outline my experiences, certifications and education qualifications.

 

 

A buyer of SEO services would want advise from a person with expertise on the subject of Search Engine Optimisation.

 

 

A - Authoritativeness - This refers to your reputation in the industry.

 
Do people look up to you as a leader in your industry? Do they accept you as a good source of information?

Google reviews the authoritativeness of the creator, the content and the website.

An article on customer relationship management (CRM) from Hubspot is authoritative because:
1. Hubspot blogs are a well known publication for all things marketing and CRM.
2. The authors are marketing professionals.
3. Once an article is published it gets updated on a regular basis, based on advancements in the field of CRM.

 

 

To quote another example, an article on SEO from Semrush is authoritative because Semrush is a well known search marketing insights tool. Semrush content team includes SEO experts that regularly publish blogs on the topic.

 

When other authorities in the industry link to your content, they accept you as a good source of content in your industry or area of expertise.

 

 

T - Trustworthiness - This refers to if a content is trustworthy or not.

 

Cite trustworthy sources while writing your articles.

Evaluate and update your content often to ensure its accurate, relevant and informative.

In the below article, the author references another source ‘global market for influencer marketing’ while explaining influencer marketing in the below paragraphs.

 

 

Some ways to check trustworthiness include - Is the content accurate (e.g. knowledge from blog content), are website transactions secure (e.g. credit card payment transactions) and is the business legitimate (e.g. product reviews from users)? 

 

 

Create a good user experience

Does the website meet usability standards? Can the website be crawled, and indexed by search engines? Technical SEO is an important component for ensuring a good user experience. Some technical factors include page speed, mobile friendly site, SEO friendly url structure, duplicate content, broken links on a page, orphaned pages.

 

 

Build authority

In the physical world people refer ‘other people’ who they trust for opportunities (e.g. projects, jobs). In the World Wide Web, this equates to websites linking to ‘certain pages on other websites’ who they trust. You may have written an article that is considered trustworthy and another website includes a link to your article. Off-page SEO outcomes include earning links and citations from authoritative websites.

 

Read this blog, to learn more about how to implement a SEO strategy for your website.

 

 

Watch on-demand webinar - How to get the most out of B2B SEO?

Written by Anees Misbahudeen

Founder & Digital Marketing Director, INNMCO

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