A Guide to the Different Types of SEO

After starting your digital marketing journey as a newbie, sometimes you might wonder that you have a website but still no one visits it or the website traffic is very low. Why is that so? Digging this question in detail tells you that having a website alone is not enough. To get high website traffic, you also need to optimize that website. This blog covers a detailed guideline to what is search engine optimization, types of SEO, and how it is done. 

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. As the name indicates, SEO means optimizing your website for search engine result pages  (SERPs). Digital marketers or SEO specialists improve the ranking or visibility of a website in the search engines through different SEO practices. The purpose of SEO is to bring organic traffic to your website by optimizing it for specific keywords or search phrases related to your niche. 

Benefits of SEO

SEO is the most important aspect of digital marketing and has a long list of benefits. Some of the benefits of SEO include:

• SEO brings organic traffic to your website.
• It is a cost-effective way of generating leads. 
• You can increase brand awareness through SEO.
• SEO practices can help you get ahead of your competitors in limited resources.
• You can improve your overall marketing strategy with SEO.
• SEO boosts the trust and credibility of your brand.
• SEO enables you to earn the highest digital marketing ROI.

Different Types of SEO

There are three core types of SEO:

• On-Page SEO
• Off-Page SEO
• Technical SEO

Apart from core SEO strategies, there are a few other specialized SEO practices that cater to different needs and objectives. These include:

• Local SEO
• E-commerce SEO
• Video SEO
• Voice SEO 

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO refers to all the actions that you perform on the website content to improve the ranking. To improve the visibility and ranking of your website, you need to make sure that your website has the relevant content and information. You can make your content helpful and easy to understand by following certain on-page SEO practices:

Keyword Research & Targeting

Keywords play the most important role in SEO. Whenever a user is looking for something, the words he use to search for that specific thing is the keyword.You need to research the keywords relevant to your need, identify the common terms or words people use most frequently to search for products or services related to your business, and use these keywords in your content. 

Content Optimization

After a thorough keyword research and using it in your content, you need to optimize it. Content optimization includes the optimization of HTML elements such as title tags, meta descriptions, or headings to convey what your website is about. You need to give a clear and brief message to search engines and users about your website or business before they dig deeper. 

Internal Linking Strategy

One of the most important steps in on-page SEO is internal linking. You need to connect different pages of your website by placing the internal links in the website’s content. It helps search engines to understand the hierarchy or structure of your website and also improves the user experience.

Image Optimization

Image optimization is also one of the most crucial elements of on-page SEO. It has a significant contribution in giving a higher ranking to your website. Image optimization means optimizing the images used on your website by using alt tags, captions, or file names. This enhances the user experience, generates more traffic from Google image search, and ultimately improves the search engine ranking. 

User Experience

People will buy from you only when they are satisfied or they see your brand as a reliable or credible option. For building that trust, you need to offer a smooth user experience to your potential customers. You can do so by working on your website speed so users don’t get frustrated and bounce back while browsing. You also need to ensure your website is mobile friendly as most people prefer using mobile phones to shop online. 

Off-Page SEO

As the name reflects, off-page SEO includes all the actions that you perform off your website to improve its ranking. 

Link Building Strategies

One of the major elements of off-page SEO is building high-quality backlinks. Backlinks means receiving a link from some other website. If someone uses or cites the content that is published on your website and refers to you as a source by linking your website, it is called a backlink. It can improve the ranking of your website to a greater extent. 

Guest Posting & Content Marketing

Another aspect of off-page SEO is guest posting and content marketing. Guest blogging or posting means writing an article or blog for another website and include a backlink to your own website. 

Brand Mentions & Online Reputation Management

Maintaining an online reputation of the brand is very important for the ranking. You can do so by engaging on social media, registering in online directories, and mentions on other websites, etc. These actions establish the authority of the brand and increase its visibility. 

Social Media Optimization

You need to pay special attention to the social media presence of your website. Engagement of users with your brand such as likes, comments, and shares can actually increase the popularity and ranking of your brand. It is also a great source of attracting traffic to your website and building relationships with your customers. This highlights the difference between digital marketing vs social media marketing because social media activities directly influence SEO results.

Technical SEO

Apart from keyword research, content optimization, and off-page SEO, there are some other factors too that impact the ranking of the website. These factors include the technical aspects such as site speed, user experience or other technical elements. Good technical SEO means people and search engines can easily navigate on your website. 

Website Crawlability & Indexation

Website crawlability means the ease with which the search engines bots can crawl on different pages of your website. In order to improve the visibility of your website, you need to make sure that the search engines can efficiently crawl on your website so that they can index the pages properly. 

There are few things that you can do as part of technical SEO to improve the ranking of your website. You need to ensure that the XML sitemap of your website is up-to-date and submitted to the search engines. You also need to use internal linking wisely so that search engines can discover new and important pages on your website. 

You also need to regularly monitor Google Search Console to identify any indexation issues and resole them quickly before they affect your ranking. 

Mobile-Friendliness & Responsive Design

Your website must be mobile-friendly to attract and retain more people on your website. You must improve the structure and functionality of your website and make sure that it works well for devices such as mobiles, tablets, ipads, etc. Your website’s design must be responsive to multiple screen sizes and resolutions. 

Website Speed Optimization

Website speed plays a very important role in determining the ranking of the website. The faster a website loads, the higher it will be ranked in the search engines. To offer a better user experience and improve the ranking, it is important to optimize the website speed. 

Some of the best practices to improve the website speed include compressing and resizing the images to reduce their load time. You can lessen the load time for returning visitors by implementing browser caching. 

Security & HTTPS

Last but not the least, website security is a very crucial element to technical SEO. It is not only important for protecting the visitors but is also one of the ranking factors. Search engines prefer secure websites. You need to ensure your website uses HTTPS and conduct regular security audits to identify and fix any error. You also need to make sure that the data you collect from the users is stored safely and is protected against any sort of privacy breach. You can implement security headers like Content Security Policy (CSP) to protect your website against any attack. 

Specialized SEO

There are multiple other ways or types of SEO to improve the ranking of websites. 

Local SEO

Businesses that have physical stores are always looking to get more foot traffic. The best thing they can do for attracting that traffic is local SEO. Businesses need to optimize their pages and websites on platforms like Google My Business or adding to other local directories. This will help your business be more visible to the local audience. 

Local SEO includes using and targeting local keywords, using local connections to build backlinks, managing online citations, etc. 

E-commerce SEO

E-commerce SEO is most beneficial for those who sell the products or services online. It helps drive more traffic and more sales. E-commerce SEO is not only about updating the product titles and descriptions, it also includes optimizing the brand or products on a website that isn’t their own such as Daraz, Ali Express, etc. 

Voice SEO

With softwares like Alexa and Siri becoming more popular, voice searches are also getting common. Voice search SEO means optimizing for the right keywords. You should identify the words that will be verbally used by your audience and optimize your website for these words. 

Nowadays, users are looking for quick answers and conducting voice searches. You must optimize your website in a way that Google quickly gathers the relevant information from your website and presents it to the user. You also need to consider slang words while doing voice SEO.  

Video SEO

Video SEO means optimizing different parts of your video such as title, tags, descriptions, or URLs. It is also important to add structured data to your website’s code so that your videos are easily seen on search engines. You can use keywords that have a good search volume and are directly relevant to your video’s topic. You can also add description and tags, and create eye-catching thumbnails for your video. 

Conclusion

Understanding different types of SEO and identifying which one is most beneficial for your website for improving your website’s ranking and visibility. Choosing the SEO strategy that best aligns with your website’s  current state and goals is important for its success. With using the right combination of techniques, you can connect more effectively with your audience and also enhance the visibility of your website.

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