A Beginner’s Guide To Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past couple of years, you would probably have heard about the term SEO or Search Engine Optimisation. In this article, let us go over some basic SEO principles and learn how SEO works.  

What Is Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation refers to the process of improving a website with an aim of making it more visible to people who look for products or services using search engines. Some examples of these search engines include Google, Yandex, Yahoo, Baidu, and Bing. Having high website visibility is beneficial for any business as being ranked highly on the first page on search engine result pages (SERPs) is a sustainable way to drive organic search traffic to the site. This form of visibility is different from the ads featured at the top of SERPs because businesses do not have to pay to be ranked highly on the first page. According to Internet Live Stats, Google processes over 40,000 search queries every second on average, which translates to over 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year globally. Therefore, it is important to optimise your website to attract higher-quality traffic and grow your business. 

Search Engine Optimisation Techniques

SEO is one of the essential digital marketing tools and there are many ways you can make good use of that. Here are the four different types of SEO Marketing:

On-Page SEO

What is on-page SEO? On-Page SEO, also known as on-site SEO, refers to the process of optimising the content on your website. In addition to creating relevant and high-quality content, on-page SEO involves optimising your headlines, HTML tags (title, meta, and header), and images. It is also about ensuring that your website has a high level of expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. On-page SEO is essential because it helps search engines to better understand your website and its content. It also aids them in determining if your website is relevant to a searcher’s query. 

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO refers to all SEO tactics that do not involve updating or publishing content to your website. These are also known to be activities from or “behind the scenes” of your website. There are many different off-page tactics you can use to increase authority and boost organic search traffic. By practising and incorporating these off-page SEO techniques, Google and other search engines will see your website as trustworthy and authoritative.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is all about enhancing the technical aspects of your website in order to increase the ranking of its pages in search engines. It includes actions and efforts such as increasing the speed of a website, making it easier to crawl, and for search engines to understand. On top of improving the crawlability of your website, it also includes enhancing the user experience as a website should not only work well with search engines, but also be fast, clear, and easy to use for the users. 

Local SEO 

Local SEO is an SEO strategy that is useful in enhancing the visibility of businesses in local search results on Google. Any business with a physical location or serving a geographic area will find local SEO helpful. How do you know if local SEO has the potential to boost your business? Simply enter several important keywords that are related to your business in Google. If there is a map along with business listings, local SEO will be able to aid your business growth.

How Does SEO Work?

When it comes to SEO, one has to understand and recognise that it is a long-term project which requires a considerable amount of daily action and activity. Those looking to take the shortest and easiest path to get ranked highly in a short period of time may opt to use tactics such as keyword stuffing and link scraping. However, it is not advisable to adopt such practices because search engines will ultimately penalise and even blacklist your site so you will never rank again. There is no SEO strategy that will bring definitive and clear results immediately.

Here are the four main steps in how SEO works:

Content Creation

A user makes and publishes a piece of content to a website, using techniques to improve and optimise the site. 

Crawling

Search engines use bots to crawl all web pages, storing the information into a collection known as an index.

Indexing

Bots tag the collected information with relevant search terms.

Ranking

Search engine algorithms determine the placement of the content on a SERP, according to how well it fulfils the user’s query.

Important Tools for Search Engine Optimisation

There are hundreds of SEO tools available to help marketers research keywords, develop strategies and measure the effectiveness of their SEO efforts. Some of them are free while others are not. Here are some of the more widely used SEO tools today:

SEMrush

SEMrush platform is often used for keyword research and online ranking data, including metrics such as search volume and cost per click. It is also able to measure SEO performance over time.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is mainly used to analyse a website’s link profile, keyword rankings, and SEO health. It can also identify which pages perform the best and which need improvement.

Google Analytics

This platform provides real-time data on the effectiveness of SEO, along with Google’s Search Console, one can keep track of website traffic and optimise rankings.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a tool from Google that helps developers, website owners, and SEO professionals understand how their site is performing on Google Search. 

Screaming Frog SEO Spider

The Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a website crawler that helps you improve onsite SEO, by extracting data & auditing for common SEO issues. It can be used to crawl both small and very large websites. 

Getting Started With Digital Marketing

Kickstart your SEO journey and gain in-demand digital marketing skills by signing up for Vertical Institute’s beginner-friendly Digital Marketing Course led by expert digital marketers in Singapore. In this course, you will get to explore everything you need to know about digital marketing: social media, and more! You will also learn about Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Google Analytics, content marketing, email marketing, and more. 

Besides digital marketing, Vertical Institute also offers UX Design and Data Analytics courses in Singapore. These are some tech skills that are highly in-demand today and will be helpful for your digital marketing career.

About Vertical Institute

Vertical Institute prepares individuals for the jobs of tomorrow. We specialise in teaching in-demand skills, building the next generation of changemakers and inventors through our world-class tech courses and certifications. 

Singaporeans and PRs can receive up to 70% IBF Funding off their course fees with Vertical Institute. The remaining fees can be claimable with SkillsFuture Credits or NTUC UTAP Funding.