SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the process of improving your website to help it rank higher in search engine results, such as Google.
In simple terms, SEO involves a range of ongoing activities that make your website easier for search engines to understand and help potential customers find it when they search for relevant products, services or information.
We should remember that search engines do not disclose exactly how their algorithms work. This means that when working on SEO, we have to rely on our own experience, industry research and the experience of other SEO professionals.
Google tells us to “create websites for people” and that websites providing a good experience and useful content are more likely to perform well in search results. This is true — but it is only part of the picture.
SEO professionals generally believe that the importance of the different factors Google considers when ranking websites can be roughly divided as follows:
It is also important to understand that the first noticeable results from SEO work usually take around 4–6 months to appear.
In this diagram, we can see that some of the most important factors include content quality, backlinks and social signals. Together, these can contribute to the overall authority and visibility of a website.
Domain authority can also be influenced by factors such as the age and history of a domain. In general, establishing organic visibility for a completely new domain can be more challenging than for an established website with a strong history.
SEO can be divided into two main areas:
* On-page SEO
* Off-page SEO
On-page SEO covers everything that you can optimise on your own website. This includes how your content is structured, its quality and uniqueness, as well as the technical implementation of the website and its content.
Off-page SEO covers factors outside your website, particularly backlinks — links to your website from other relevant and reputable websites. The quality and relevance of these links are generally more important than simply having a large number of them.
