Nowadays, many websites talk about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), but if you're a layman, you're wondering: What the hell is this SEO? What the heck of advantages can it offer?

This is normal of you and even understandable. There are so many terms to memorize, ROI, URL, SSL, UX, UI, SEO that anyone can get lost.

So I will try to explain what SEO is and what is its purpose ok?

Imagine the following situation that happened in the past. You have a product to sell, but you needed some kind of mechanism for that product to stand out in the market, so you turned to radio, television, newspapers and other media and paid for it, right? That way your product could be seen according to the amount of money you had available to pay.

However if you didn't have that much money, your product would have to be really good and spread word of mouth right? Many famous brands started this way in the past and were hugely successful, a very classic example is Tupper Ware, those packaging for storing food. The brand did word of mouth advertising throughout its existence until…. the emergence of the internet.

In the digital age, the advertising market took a 180 degree turn and everything that was known about traditional marketing was little by little being left aside, newspapers went bankrupt, magazines disappeared from the market, pamphlets and business cards, although they still persist to exist, they cover a very limited area, sometimes the neighborhood, classifieds, yellow pages bindings turned to dust and in the absence of these dinosaurs several digital babies were born, Yahoo, Altavista, AOL, BING among others.

Of all these babies, one has turned into a digital marketing giant GOOGLE.

Today, in almost all research studies, the giant dominates the market and its product needs to be on this list of quantum dimensions of products that can be viewed anywhere on planet earth. The neighborhood is no longer the limit, the city is no longer the limit for your product either. In fact, the limit no longer exists.

But, as in the past, your product needs to be seen by as many people as possible for someone to be interested and buy it.

But how to achieve this goal?

The first idea that comes to mind today is ADVERTISING ON GOOGLE right?

Okay, but with the thousands of ads that the giant holds, how can your ad stand out from the rest? The answer is not simple, but it is concrete and will help you understand the dynamics and importance of SEO

A superlative number

Engrave this fact in your mind. Monthly, Google alone receives more than 100 billion searches looking for some product or subject. Therefore, if your product has a good positioning in these searches, it will have a greater chance of being viewed by a potential consumer and this will make the difference between the success and failure of your sales.

What does it take to rank well in search results?

There are several ways. One is to make a lot of money available to make paid ads on Google, just like it used to be, the other is the well-executed SEO structuring.

If you can combine both ways then you will have the best of the best.

This is where SEO comes in

SEO - Search Engine Optimization, translating into Portuguese, means Search Engine Optimization. It is a set of techniques that aim to position the pages of a site among the best results of search engines on sites such as Google, Yahoo, Bing and others.

By structuring a site with SEO techniques, it is possible to optimize it to achieve this objective of publicity in front of competitors, as Google has its own algorithms to recognize these techniques and position the site in searches, drawing the attention of potential customers with the content more relevant to your searches.

But wait a minute, SEO or SEM?

Before we get to the bottom of SEO, we need to clear up a confusion that arises when we start to understand the whole process. There is another acronym very similar to SEO, SEM.

SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing and also encompasses marketing techniques aimed at search engines, including sponsored links such as Google Ads. The difference between them is that SEO focuses on reaching the user organically, that is, free exposure, while SEM is based on paid media.

That said, let's continue to challenge the SEO.

How do search engines work?

The Internet is today a huge cluster of websites, growing exponentially every day. Tons of information are processed by search engines every day. It is a dynamic area and new markets, competitors and content for the most varied audiences are emerging all the time.

The bridge that makes this connection between people and the mass of information available on the web, are sites like Google, called search sites or content indexing sites. They use tools that scan the Internet organizing subjects to that are made available to users in the best possible way.

These search engines use complex algorithms to classify Internet pages in accordance with the expectations of the user who writes a subject or keyword, thus pointing out the relevance of each page according to what was written or said at the time of the search. .

Google's algorithm uses three processes to carry out this survey and deliver relevant information to potential customers.

Tracking

Googlebot is a virtual robot based on artificial intelligence that uses complex algorithms to execute visits to the pages of a website and thus check for new links or changes. Once this process is finished, it sends it to the index, updating its information.

Indexing

In this phase, Googlebot analyzes and processes all new pages as well as pages that have undergone some changes, including them in its index. Several pieces of information are indexed: Publication date, site content, titles, descriptions, performance, region, in short, a relevant set to support an efficient result to the one who performs the web search, the user.

Search

Knowing the indexing step above, it's easy to understand that when you perform a Google search, you're actually no longer searching the sites, but the results indexed by Google. That's why it's important for Google to capture information relevant to your business. So that, at the time of searches, the Internet user receives as close as possible what he wants to receive in terms of information.

The Algorithm

Due to the gigantic size of information collected, search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo and others need from time to time to update their algorithms to refine more and more the correct result to be delivered to the Internet user. This causes them to constantly change protocols and search methods in their algorithms, impacting the results of a website.

A classic example was when cell phones and tablets began to appear. Websites were not adapted to be viewed on these tiny screens and Google noticed this. Thus, he demanded that, in order for a site to appear in its index, that site must necessarily be responsive, that is, be seen clearly both on a PC screen and on a laptop or cell phone, tablet, etc. This impacted billions of websites that had to totally change their build structure or they would drop out of search.

At the time, this change became fundamental for a site's ranking in searches.

As this other hundred requirements came later and the sites had to adapt.

These adaptations are accompanied and structured by SEO techniques

SEO Positioning Factors

Google does not disclose which factors are most relevant to their crawling and indexing algorithms, we know that there are more than 200, but this number changes all the time. This means that there are many variables to consider and details that can make a difference in the result of a search.

I will mention some factors that today are considered as top trend for the positive ranking of a site in the searches.

Responsive layout

Today this is one of the most, if not the most important indexing factor in search engines. Responsive layout. It's simple to understand why. Today, most Internet browsing is done through mobile devices, and Google is always concerned about the experience of its users. Google declared in 2014 that it would prioritize the best placement for sites that had a responsive layout.

If your company website is still not responsive then change it immediately. If possible, change it to completely mobile versions, and Google will rank it better in its searches.

Quality of Content

In SEO strategies, this should be your main objective, to promote and deliver quality content to Internet users. Google doesn't say anything about this, however in its mission it states that its main objective is for the user to have the best possible experience when performing a search, so if your page has quality content, Google will certainly increase the relevance of the page for a given search.

In the construction of the content, deliver useful information that genuinely meets what the user is looking for. Good content generates authority and trusts users, who pay attention to what your brand exposes on the web.

Don't copy and paste existing content, Google's algorithms detect this type of occurrence and sometimes punish sites by removing them from searches or lowering them to levels that your customers will never find you in a search. Content Marketing is a valuable tool that helps SEO, but you need to know how to use it correctly.

On Page

On Page are changes made to a page and Google's algorithms understand what its content is about.

We will only mention the main ones here:

Domain Authority

Here I pause to understand an important point when we work with an SEO strategy: it is super efficient, however the results are obtained in the medium and long term, that is, it is necessary to have consistency so that the desired positioning is reached.

I say this above because a highly regarded criterion for ranking pages in searches is domain authority. Which is measured from a mix between the time of existence of the site and the relevance of its content to users.

Each page is evaluated and inherits the authority of the domain on which it is hosted, hence the importance of working not only on some content that you think is the most valuable, but also on the SEO of the entire site.

Authority is scored from 1 to 100. The higher the score a domain receives, the higher the Domain Authority, making the site rank better than others with less authority.

Page performance

Performance is critical on the web, a website that takes more than 2 seconds to load in a browser is penalized by Google for harming the user experience.

In other words, the design is fundamental, but loading it with unnecessary information such as heavy images GIFs, unnecessary javascripts can profoundly affect the overall performance of the page loading, making it harmful to the site's ranking.

Site architecture

All information on a website is read by Googlebot. He expects that there is a logical order of content, the lack of this organization makes it difficult for the algorithm to understand the content available, and causes a negative impact on ranking.

It is necessary to follow a logical order of header, body text, footer and title and subtitle tags. Prominent sources are also important to demonstrate central ideas within the content.

When a user enters the page, the titles and subtitles already give a reading direction in the content, helping it to a more fluid reading.

The title tag is also important and helps search engines understand the central theme of the page, improving its indexing according to the subjects it is related to. This is the first point of improvement in an SEO strategy.

Another point to check is the description meta tag. Which is nothing more than a simple, short paragraph that tells search engines and visitors what the content of a page is. When you don't create a meta description, Google does it for indexing, but it's not ideal.

The description meta tag is displayed below the title, in the search results bar, and directly influences the user's decision of which link to access when performing a search.

Finally, another essential feature for On Page SEO and an ideal architecture is the use of keywords in strategic locations on the page, as search engines identify them when indexing a site's content.

They are essential, but they should not be included in excess, which can harm the quality of the content and make your page fall in positions, losing relevance.

Off Page

An SEO strategy can be continued through off-domain actions to generate more authority and draw attention to your site, improving rankings.

Called Off Page SEO which consists of building links through other pages. This activity can be done with the participation in other means of communication such as social networks, blogs and other sites, mentioning your site or product.

Backlinks

Partner with other authority domains to publish content and articles that link to your site.

The more links pointing to your pages, the better your Google ranking will be. The engine considers these as votes of confidence, which demonstrate that other people believe in what you present and find your content valuable.

This directly impacts the authority of the domain, as it shows that your site is recognized as an influencer in a certain type of subject, according to the links built.

And just like receiving links, linking also attracts greater relevance. When, within your content, you cite other domains recognized by your authority on the Internet, Google understands that your page uses reliable sources and assigns more points to your domain.

Beware though, a common mistake is cluttering pages with random links, which can be penalized by Google. The use of external links should be done with caution, inserting only content relevant to the subject covered on the page.

More attention! Some pages do not give authority, they understand that they are only cited because they already have a lot of authority and other sites use it to increase their own authority without really caring about exposed content. And this Google notices and can even penalize a site for this action.

Social Media

Google still doesn't count actions within social networks for ranking. So it doesn't matter if you've gained millions of followers, likes or shares, it won't affect the positioning of your content in searches.

However, social media can indirectly impact SEO:

If your social network has a lot of influence, they can direct your audience to your website, where users will be able to see your content in more depth.

Google's algorithms are increasingly advanced and increasingly increase the ability to interpret a citation referring to a particular brand, identify the context of that citation and analyze whether it is positive or negative to position a website.

Keyword

An important factor for a good positioning in search engines. It was once considered to be of extreme importance, but today it is no longer. Even so, it is still very important to choose the keywords because it still has some relevance in ranking.

Keyword types

Head Tail

Short words, with one or two words, that represent the segment as a whole.

Long Tail

Unlike the shorter Head Tails, the Long tail can represent an entire sentence. For example: “5G cell phone with 128ram” or “Hiking shoes”.

Why Adopt SEO?

To stand out from the competition and have a better chance of being found on search engines. SEO can take your pages to the top positions in search engines.

Increased traffic

Using SEO techniques has a direct impact on your website traffic. An increase in the number of visitors means more business opportunities. This is due to the adequacy of your content with what Google considers to be relevant.

Lead Generation

By increasing traffic to your website you can increase the number of leads for future virtual marketing campaigns

Higher return on investment

When well implemented, ROI is certain, since over time it is no longer necessary to spend lots of money on paid campaigns as organic ranking increases over time, strengthening your brand and products through greater authority given to your website.

But it is necessary to remember that SEO strategies must be thought of in the medium and long term. Be wary of companies that promise to put your business first overnight, that doesn't happen in real life unless you spend thousands of dollars on paid advertising, but that's not SEO.

With well-structured SEO the results can take a while to appear, but if everything is done right, they will.

Need more help?

That's it, a little bit of what SEO techniques can do for your business, but there's much more to be revealed, however, as the saying goes: “Let the shoemaker make shoes”, right?

If you need a consultancy or want to implement SEO on your website, feel free to contact us or click on the WhatsApp icon on the side and talk to our experts!