What Is SEO? Search Engine Optimization Explanation & Key Success Factors

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, regarding the search engine results for Google, Yahoo, and Bing (primarily).

What does SEO mean?

SEO is the backend website and online keywords and coding used to help you rank higher on search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

Simply put, SEO is the process and strategies used to increase traffic to a website. Using multiple SEO techniques and keyword research tools will help a website be found by people searching anywhere on the internet.

Top notch Search Engine Optimization can be fundamentally achieved by these 5 processes:

• Using specific keywords in titles, headings, descriptions, and content
• Adding related keyword strings that enhance the content
• Include images and adding alt text descriptions to them
• Build an online architecture leading to and from a website with links
• Create trust and authority with external profiles

The Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors

There are many factors that contribute to optimizing a website and off-page content. Luckily, Search Engine Land took the step to create a wonderful table outlining these SEO success factors in a periodic table format.

Included in the table are the following factors that contribute the success of a website’s content optimization:

• Content – The text quality, freshness, keyword relativity and accuracy
• Architecture – The technical flow, crawlability, speed, security and URL formats
• HTML – The structure setup, titles, headings, tags, and descriptions
• Trust – Validity, reliability, creating authority and identity while providing accuracy
• Links – Links webbed within and backlinking from many quality sites and posts
• Personal – Providing locality, connectivity, and social likeability
• Social – Respected social brands provide reputation growth and encourage sharing

Take a look at The Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors by Search Engine Land for a full description of each of the influencing factors and download the table yourself.

We’re not going to lie, SEO is a beast to master. There are many moving parts that contribute to the overall success of SEO and they are continuously changing. But, by using this guide and other SEO guides, mastering these factors can happen and the progress will show in the search results.

SEO For Your Website

Managing this for a small business owner is quite time-consuming and can be a full-time job. That is why it is often suggested in today’s growing competitive landscape to hire a local SEO expert. At the very least, hire an SEO specialist or SEO company to perform an SEO analysis on your website to get an overview of where the website stands on its own and on the search engines with its competitors.

Next Steps

Click here to hire an SEO expert.