SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It is the process in which you can get your page/ website to rank higher in search engines, such as Google. As organic search is one of the main ways people discover content online, ranking higher in SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) will lead to an increase in traffic to a website.

In Google and other search engines, the results page often features paid ads at the top of the page, followed by the regular results or what search marketers call the “organic search results”. Traffic that comes via SEO is often referred to as “organic search traffic” to differentiate it from traffic that comes through paid search. Paid search is often referred to as Pay-Per-Click (PPC).

Search engines such as Google use an algorithm or set of rules to determine what pages to show for any given query. These algorithms have evolved to be extremely complex, and take into account hundreds or even thousands of different ranking factors to determine the rankings of their SERPs – not to mention, that Google changes their algorithm from time to time, making it near impossible to stay on top of it. However, there are 3 core metrics that search engines evaluate to determine the quality of a site and how it should rank:

• Backlinks – Links from other websites play a key role in determining the ranking of a site in Google and other search engines. The reason is, that a link can be seen as a vote of quality from other websites since website owners are unlikely to link to other sites that are of poor quality.
• Content – In addition to looking at links, search engines also analyze the content of a webpage to determine if it would be relevant for any given search query. A large part of SEO is in creating content that is targeted towards the keywords that search engines’ users are searching for. This is why carrying out a Keyword analysis is important.
• Page structure – The third core component of SEO is page structure. Because webpages are written in HTML, how the HTML code is structured can impact a search engine’s ability to evaluate a page. Including relevant keywords in the title, URL, and headers of the page and making sure that a site is crawlable are actions that site owners can take to improve the SEO of their site.

Top 5 SEO tools that are FREE:

• Yoast SEO – A WordPress plugin that helps you optimize your website’s content for search engines, by providing on-page optimization suggestions, meta descriptions, and XML sitemap features, among others.
• Google Analytics – A free web analytics tool that allows you to track and analyze your website’s traffic, user behaviour, demographics, and conversion rates.
• Google Search Console – A free tool that helps you monitor and improve your website’s presence in Google search results, by providing insights into search queries, crawl errors, backlinks, and other performance metrics.
• SEOability – A useful tool that provides a detailed SEO audit but also gives tips and instructions on how to fix the problems found on your website.
• Screaming Frog – A website crawler that helps you improve onsite SEO by auditing for common SEO issues.

SEO is an ongoing process. Results do not happen overnight. Ensure you are staying consistent with the ‘freshness’ of your website and always check that there are no broken links as this may affect your chances of ranking highly on SERPs.