In Digital Marketing: What is Search Engine Optimization?

Learning what SEO is in digital marketing is fundamental to every digital marketer.

How do I know?

Because that fundamentally changed my perspective on digital marketing.

My name is Ashraf Ahmed and I started my digital marketing career after completing my digital marketing and E-commerce certification from Google.

Here’s what you’re going to learn:

• The Definition of SEO.
• Why SEO Matters to You as a Digital Marketer.
• understand pillars of SEO.
• How do you achieve SEO rankings?
• How to learn SEO?

And so much more, but let’s address the elephant in the room.

You should feel skeptical about anyone who claims to have digital marketing career success (including me).

I’m not going to flex on you with credentials and experience. If you’re still unsure whether you should trust me or this information, please see my stuff on Linkedin.

You’re back?

If so, it's time to get down to business.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it is all about optimizing websites for search engines like Google, Microsoft Bing, and other search engines whenever people search for things of interest.

Searchers insert a search query which is a phrase or a keyword combination users enter in search engines to find things of interest. Then, search engines match the keywords in the query with its vast index of web pages, which has been built through continuous crawling and indexing of the web.

For Search engines to deliver the best results possible, their algorithm assesses and ranks these pages based on hundreds of factors, including relevance, content quality, and user experience. The more accurate the keywords are, the better results will show up on the search engine results page (SERP). More about that later in this article.

The importance of SEO to digital marketers.

As a digital marketer, understanding SEO is crucial to obtain success in the digital world. Being able to improve a website's rankings on search engines like Google should boost your digital career. Obviously, as an SEO specialist, you have to implement successful SEO strategies that lead to these factors:

• Increased organic traffic:

Organic traffic is when searchers visit your website through an organic search.

Compared to paid advertising, increasing traffic with organic search is a long-term goal that requires time and effort.

As I have said, it requires time to gain traffic organically and you need to persuade your clients to give it to you.

• Smooth User Experience:

People remember things positively or negatively, so when visitors have a good experience on your website, it must be positively remembered.

To achieve that, improve the website design with a familiar navigation section with micro-interaction animation and well-structured text.

To verify that your website has a comfortable user experience, analyze metrics of engagement like engagement time.

• Competitive Advantage:

The competitive advantage of SEO lies in its ability to increase organic traffic to your website.

By optimizing your site with relevant keywords and quality content, you improve visibility on search engines, making it easier for potential customers to find you.

For example, businesses that invest in SEO often see higher conversion rates and better ROI compared to other marketing strategies.

Implementing these SEO tips can help your business stay ahead in a crowded market.

• Credibility and Trust:

Credibility and trust are crucial in SEO because they determine how search engines and users perceive a website's reliability and authority.

High-quality content, reputable backlinks, and user engagement help establish credibility. For example, creating helpful guides and resources can demonstrate expertise and build trust with your audience.

Trying these SEO practices ensures better search rankings and visitor loyalty, making your SEO efforts more effective and rewarding.

• Cost-effectiveness:

Successful SEO strategies enhance cost-effectiveness by reducing advertising expenses and increasing organic traffic.

By optimizing content with relevant keywords and improving site structure, businesses attract targeted visitors without ads that cost a lot.

This method provides a sustainable way to reach potential customers and increase revenue.

• Long-term results and sustainability

Effective SEO strategies ensure long-term results and sustainability by continuously attracting organic traffic.

Creating valuable content and following link-building practices helps maintain high rankings for long periods.

lastly, This approach increases visibility and customer engagement, ensuring lasting benefits for businesses.

Pillars of SEO

Search Engine Optimization can be divided into several types, each with a specific focus.

In this case, On-page SEO involves optimizing web pages to rank and earn more relevant traffic in search engines by Optimizing what is on the screen. Off-page SEO refers to actions taken outside your website. Technical SEO focuses on improving the technical aspects of a website, such as site speed.

Next, we will help you Understand the different types of SEO that can help you develop a more comprehensive and effective SEO strategy.

On-page SEO

On-page SEO involves optimizing web pages to appear in the SERP and getting more traffic.

This involves improving the content quality, keyword research, best keyword usage, meta tags, and external and internal link building. For instance, incorporating relevant keywords naturally into the content can help search engines better understand the page’s topic and the website as a whole.

By mastering on-page SEO techniques, you can significantly solve many problems that cause bad experiences for your visitors. To emphasize, on-page SEO optimizing includes:

• Title tag

Title tags are HTML codes that indicate what the title of a page is. it displays that title in search engines in addition to social media posts, and browser tabs. Furthermore, they can encourage users to click on your page.

• Meta description

A meta description tag is an HTML element on a site that provides a brief summary of the page. Search engines like Google may use it to show a snippet which is the descriptive text part of a search result.

• Header Tags

Header tags are HTML tags used to set apart headings and subheadings from the rest of the content on a webpage, in descending order of importance from H1 to H6. make sure to put the main title of the page inside the H1 tag.

• Linkable Content

Whether we publish articles, news, essays, ebooks, or stories, at the end of the day they all are content and should be valuable that people share them and other websites link them on their sites.

• Images

Images are very important for visually appealing and grabbing attention, they make visitors' experience enjoyable so they stay for a long time. You should put your own images or the ones that have no copyright. If you don't have the skills to design your own images you can use screenshots instead.

• Internal Links

An internal link is any hyperlink that leads to a page or resource on the same website. Internal Links help visitors and search engine crawlers navigate and discover new pages. For instance, think of your website navigation. You have links to different pages on your site, like About Us, articles, newsletters, and more. These links are internal links because they connect two pages on the same site.

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO refers to all the actions taken outside your own website to impact your rankings within search engine results pages (SERPs).

The primary success in off-page SEO is earning backlinks from reputable sites, which tell to search engines that your site is trustworthy and authoritative. Additionally, social media marketing, email marketing and influencer outreach can also boost off-page SEO.

Effective off-page SEO can greatly improve your website's domain authority and search engine ranking. Deeply, on-page SEO optimizing includes:

• Backlinks

Backlinks are external links from other websites that lead to your site. The more high-value backlinks your website has, the better it will rank for relevant search results. For this reason, generating backlinks for your website is one of the most important approach of discoverability and authoritativeness.

• Social Media Engagement

For more traffic and leads, social media are being used on a huge scale to get traffic from various social media platforms. this also helps with Improving engagement with users.

• Guest Posting

Guest blogging -also known as guest posting- is the practice of writing and publishing a blog post on another website in exchange of receiving credit for their work and a link to their website (in author byline).

Technical SEO

Technical SEO involves optimizing a website's technical elements to improve its search engine rankings.

This includes improving site speed, ensuring mobile-friendliness, creating an XML sitemap, and fixing broken links. For example, a fast-loading site enhances user experience and reduces bounce rates, which can positively affect rankings.

Implementing strong technical SEO practices can help search engines crawl and index your site more efficiently, leading to better visibility. Here’s how to do technical SEO

• Mobile-friendliness

Mobile friendliness is the measure of how well a website is designed and optimized to load on a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet. You need to ensure that load fast with no design issues on various small screens. Finally, the content on the website version and the mobile version must match all the time.

• Site Speed

All websites should have good site speed or they are going to perform bad. If a website has a bad site speed, visitor would leave, bounce rate would be high and all your SEO efforts will not gain any results. Site speed should be 0:0.2 ms, 0.2:1 second is acceptable, any number higher than 1 second needs immediate improvement.

• HTTPS

In the digital world, you need to comfort your visitors that their data are secure. To demonstrate that, you need to enable your website to HTTPS which is more secure than HTTP. An SSL certificate is a data file hosted in a website's origin server. SSL certificates make SSL/TLS encryption possible, and they contain the website's public key and the website's identity, along with related information. .

• Broken Links

broken links are hyperlinks that point to a page or resource that does not exist. Most often, these linked pages were deleted or moved without a redirection set up. When the user or crawler follows a broken link, the server returns a 404 (Not found) or 410 (Gone) status code. You need to fix broken links whether they are broken outgoing links which are links from you website to other domains, or they are broken backlinks which are links TO your website from other domains.

• Crawlability

Do you like holes in the roads? neither do crawlers. Crawlers are a type of bots that is typically operated by search engines like Google and Bing. They also do not like holes in websites' code to ultra-quickly index the content of websites all across the Internet so that those websites can appear in search engine results.

How to rank in SEO?

Know how search engines work.

To win the game, you have to understand the game.

Obtaining well-structured knowledge of how search engine work is essential to take your website to the SERP.

At the end of the day, search engines reward websites with best SEO strategies.

Research Research Research

In SEO, Research is fundamental to take effective actions in the right direction.

As an SEO specialist, you will do research on daily basis, whether it is keywords research, competitors research, content ideas research and research of valuable backlinks.

Developing research skills should be a priority that needs daily practice.

Create Sharable content

People share content every day and you want to be part of it.

To do that, your content should highlight your E-E-A-T, which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.

If you can create valuable content, referral links will follow.

Monitor and maintain your work

Monitoring and maintaining your SEO work is crucial for sustaining SEO ranking.

Regularly track key performance metrics such as organic traffic, bounce rates, and keyword rankings to identify areas needing improvement. Utilize tools like Google Analytics and Search Console for accurate insights and to detect any issues early.

These practices help ensure your SEO efforts remain effective and achieve your objectives.

Analyze and adjust

Analyzing and adjusting your SEO strategy is essential for achieving optimal results.

Evaluate your website's performance through detailed analytics using analytics tools like Google analytics to identify strengths and weaknesses. Make necessary adjustments to on-page elements, backlink profiles, and content quality to enhance visibility and rankings.

This approach helps maintain a competitive edge and drive continuous improvement in your SEO performance.

Resources to learn SEO

• Best SEO guide collection
• Google
• MOZ guide
• Aherfs guide
• backlinko
• Nathan Gotch's youtube channel

Final Thoughts

Understanding SEO in digital marketing is not just an option; it's a necessity for any serious digital marketer.

By grasping the fundamentals of SEO, you open doors to increased organic traffic,improved user experience, competitive advantage, enhanced credibility, cost-effectiveness, and long-term sustainability.

As you integrate SEO best practices into your digital marketing strategy, remember that it’s a continuous process requiring dedication and adaptability.

Keep refining your techniques, stay updated with the latest trends, and always aim for