Search engine optimisation (also known as SEO), is the reason you find exactly what you’re searching for when you turn to Google for a step-by-step guide on how to change your broken bike chain, where to buy a new pair of boots, or where to go on holiday this time of year.
In simple terms, SEO is a set of techniques aimed at optimising a website to improve its visibility in search results. Its main goal is to increase organic (non-paid) traffic to a website by enhancing its relevance and credibility for specific search queries.
There are 4 main elements/pillars that make up SEO – technical, content, on-page and off-page optimisation. Let’s look at these in more detail…
What Are the 4 Pillars of SEO?
Search engine optimisation has four key areas, also known as ‘pillars’ or ‘elements’. These are: technical SEO, content SEO, on-site SEO, and off-site SEO. Understanding these 4 SEO pillars is crucial when developing effective digital marketing strategies for your business.
Let’s take a look at these in more detail…
1. Technical SEO
As it says in the name, technical SEO looks at improving the technical side of a website, i.e. its visibility on search engines. It focuses on ensuring that search engine crawlers can access, understand, and index the content of a website efficiently.
In addition to improving a website’s crawl and index capabilities, technical SEO also refers to your website’s mobile adaptability. As mobile devices are becoming more and more popular when searching for products or services, websites must be mobile-friendly and versatile if they want to compete.
Technical SEO also improves things like page loading times and how the website content is structured. These are super important for Google as, if a website takes a long time to load, the user is likely going to click off the page and onto another website due to the poor user experience.
At Lumen SEO, we are experts in fixing technical SEO issues and ensuring our client’s websites are fast and functional for optimum search performance and user experience.
2. On-Page Optimisation
On-page optimisation is the process of optimising individual webpages, ensuring the content is both relevant to the page and provides a great user experience.
In the past, many businesses approached on-page SEO as keyword stuffing – cramming as many keywords as possible within the content. But 1, this made for a poor user experience and 2, Google clocked on and started ranking these pages poorly.
Nowadays, on-page optimisation includes smart keyword targeting, where keywords are threaded naturally throughout content and only mentioned in key elements when necessary. This means that the content reads well, while also satisfying what the user is actually searching for.
Learn more about why keywords are important for SEO here.
On-Page SEO Examples:
After extensive keyword research, some key on-page optimisation elements include:
- Titles (H1’s, H2’s, H3’s etc.) – The main headings/ subheadings
- Metadata – Title tags & meta descriptions
- Images – alt text
- Internal linking – Links to other pages on your website. Discover the best practices for internal linking here
- Keyword placements – Naturally threading the keyword throughout the intro, middle and end of your, for example, blog
3. Content SEO
It goes without saying that content has a significant impact on SEO. High-quality, valuable and relevant content is not only absolutely crucial for on-page optimisation, it also attracts and retains visitors.
The purpose of a search engine is to deliver the most relevant and informative content to users typing in a query, so producing content that satisfies user intent is absolutely essential if you want that page to rank well.
Content includes blog posts, product descriptions, website copy, and any other textual or multimedia content on a site. Discover how to write SEO-friendly blog posts here.
If you’d like some additional help writing high-quality content, our team of professional writers can do the work for you and drive new traffic to your website through well-written and research-driven blog posts. Get in touch to find out more!
4. Off-Page SEO
Last but certainly not least, off-page optimisation refers to SEO strategies applied outside of a website to improve its visibility, rankings and overall credibility on the internet. The goal of off-page SEO is to get search engines (and users) to view your site as more trustworthy and authoritative.
One of the most critical elements of off-page SEO is building high-quality backlinks, which are links from other websites to yours. Search engines consider backlinks as “votes” for the quality and relevance of your content, which are both key ranking factors as reputable sites are much more valuable than those from low-quality or spammy sites.
Common ways to gain backlinks might include things like responding to journalist requests, getting your guest posts published on other websites with a link to your site or press releases. Other tactics include adding your business to directories or ensuring all mentions of your website are linked back to your site.
At Lumen SEO, we cover all of the above to ensure our clients have the best possible chance of gaining quality backlinks to their website. Think of us as part of your PR team.
What Are Search Engines and How Do They Work?
By now you should have a pretty good idea of what SEO is and how it works, but one question might still remain – what really are search engines and how do they work?
Search engines (Google, Bing etc). are used by individuals when they have a question or purchase in mind and use the internet to find what they’re looking for. Search engines use algorithms (computer programmes) that look for clues to give users the exact valuable results they are looking for.
There are 3 main steps when it comes to how search engines work: crawling (the discovery stage), indexing (the filing stage) and ranking (the retrieval stage).
1. Crawling
The first stage is crawling. This means Search engines send out ‘web crawlers’, also known as ‘spiders’ or ‘robots’ to find new pages and record information about them.
Their purpose is to find new web pages that exist online, and to periodically check the content on pages they’ve previously visited to see if they’ve been updated or changed.
2. Indexing
The next step is indexing, which is when a search engine decides whether or not it is going to show the content that it’s crawled. If a crawled web page is considered worthy by a search engine, it will be added to its index.
When a page is indexed, it is then stored in a database where it can later be retrieved, i.e. It can be shown in search results.
Some reasons why search engines might choose not to index a web page include:
- If the content is duplicate
- If the content is considered low value or spammy
- If it couldn’t be crawled for whatever reason
- The page or domain lacked inbound links
3. Ranking
The third step is the most important step for search engines, and that is ranking. A page can only rank after the two steps above (crawling and indexing) are complete.
Interestingly, there are more than 200 ranking signals that search engines use to sort through and rank content, and they all fit under the four pillars of SEO: technical, on-page, and off-page and content.
Some common signals that search engines use to rank web pages include things like page loading time, keyword presence in metadata, the page structure, the use of internal/external linking etc.
Do I need SEO For My Website?
In most cases, the short answer is yes, every website needs SEO for a better chance of ranking on search engines. Whether you have a business, a blog, or any online presence, SEO is a valuable investment that can contribute to your overall success in the digital landscape. And the great thing about SEO is that it continues to provide results way after you’ve done the work.
How Lumen SEO Can Help
We at Lumen SEO can take care of your whole SEO strategy, including keyword research, link building, content writing and technical SEO. You can learn more about what an SEO agency, like ours, does here.
If you like the sound of working with us, we offer free, no obligation SEO audits on business websites. To claim yours, simply enter your details here and we’ll get a free SEO audit to you within 24 hours.
For a friendly chat about the SEO services we provide here at Lumen SEO, contact us today. Alternatively, you can message us on either our LinkedIn or Instagram pages
Written by Kate, for Lumen SEO.
