21 September, 2020

Back to School - What is SEO? What are its types? Why is SEO important for your online business?

In this post we will learn about SEO, what are its different types and how businesses can benefit from this online marketing technique. Let’s get started.

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Back to School - What is SEO? What are its types? Why is SEO important for your online business?

In the past businesses gave priority to offline marketing to generate leads. Ever seen those shouting hoardings on a highway advertising 2BHK apartments below 50 lacs? Or have you ever received a pamphlet while walking on the street. It’s all offline marketing and ways to attract potential buyers.

But today due to shift in operations and end goals, companies are prioritizing online marketing to generate business. Almost every online company is spending on paid and organic marketing to attract traffic due to the huge potential it holds.  

In this post we will learn about SEO, what are its different types and how businesses can benefit from this online marketing technique. Let’s get started.

What is SEO?


SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is a digital marketing technique to increase the flow of quality and quantity of traffic to your website via organic search results. It is a popular and organic method to gain relevancy on the search engines. One needs to produce high quality and useful content using relevant keywords and building backlinks to attract traffic on their portal.

In a nutshell, SEO is all about making your website search engine friendly, and  improving your website’s ranking without spending money. Hence, optimizing your website is essential to stay on the top of SERP (Search Engine Page Results).

Now that you know what SEO is, let’s understand how it works.

How SEO Works?


In SEO you optimize your website for the search engines you want it to rank for - Google, Yahoo Bing, YouTube and/or Amazon. With optimization, we mean comprehensive optimization, including the title tags and meta descriptions that are both informative and of the right length. The search engine crawlers scan your website to establish how user-friendly it is. If your website fulfills all the criteria of search engines - research-based original content, organically placed keywords, ethical backlinking, you are rewarded with better ranking on SERP.

If you do SEO systematically, your business can benefit immensely. By producing the right content for the right audience you can multiply your website’s online visibility. This will also engage your customers in a more structured way.

Points to be noted:

  • Search engine rewards website that:
  • Producing engaging and useful content consistently.
  • Create well-researched and targeted content.
  • Develop content that addresses target audiences’ queries.
  • Share and repurpose existing content.

Now that you are familiar with the way SEO works and provide results, let’s understand the types of SEO.

What are the different types of SEO?


When most people think about SEO, they usually think of a very cliched type of optimization - using keywords all over the web page. While using keywords is important, too much usage could lead to negative consequences. And SEO is more than just keywords. Here are 5 types of SEO you need to focus on:

On-page SEO: As the name suggests, it has everything to do with the activities that are carried out on an unpublished page. Anything that you put on the page like images, videos, text content, meta title and description, and URL are all ingredients of an on-page SEO. The most crucial element of on-page SEO is creating quality content that your target audience wants and search engines likes.

Off-page SEO: This technique includes activities that are performed on the page after the page goes live - typically your page promotion activities. Some of the popular off-page activities include link building, blog sharing and commenting, brand mentions, guest posting, influencer outreach, content marketing, social networking etc.

Mobile SEO: As the name implies, this type of SEO is primarily targeted towards mobile devices. As you may know, 60% of Google searches are performed on smartphones. If optimized correctly, imagine the amount of traffic it will bring to your website. Hence, it makes total sense for businesses to invest in mobile SEO.

Local SEO: This is best suitable for local businesses. If you own a local restaurant and want people to visit it, then you should optimize your website for local SEO. While optimizing ensure you have your business name, address, and contact information on all pages of your website. Do the following things:

Create a Google My Business Account.

  • Register your business with reliable directories like Yahoo small business, Yelp Foursquare etc.
  • Don’t miss out on promoting your website on local directories and local newspaper websites.
  • Add the Local Business Schema on your homepage.

Technical SEO: It focuses on the technical elements that affect the visibility of a website on search engines. The idea is to ensure crawlers can crawl and index a website without any issues. Keep below guidelines in mind:

  • Follow SEO-friendly web design.
  • Optimize your site structure and URL structure.
  • Develop a website that loads faster on both website and mobile.
  • Add and verify your website with Google Search Console and specify your preferred domain.

What are the different SEO techniques?


SEO comprises three major techniques, if used correctly can reward your website with better ranking, but if misused can penalize your website.
White Hat SEO - This technique is used to improve your website online visibility, ranking and traffic ethically. In a nutshell, this method does not violate the search engine guidelines to get rankings. Though it takes time, the results derived from this technique are lasting. Some of the best examples of white hat SEO are creating high-quality and useful content, getting backlinks from high authority websites, organizing the content on your website as per SEO guidelines set by Google, promoting your content on social networking platforms, regularly updating your website with fresh and unique content that answer audience’s queries, producing exhaustive content pieces, creating different types of content - text, audio, video, images etc.


Black Hat SEO - This technique earns traffic for your website unethically, meaning they violate search engine guidelines to get instant rankings. Few of the examples of black hat SEO include: purchased backlinks, plagiarism, keyword stuffing, thin content, backlinks from irrelevant websites.


Gray Hat SEO - This is a technique that utilizes both black and white hat SEO methods to generate traffic and ranking. While they don’t use one complete technique, they generally use a mixture of both techniques, there are chances of your website getting hurt after an update.


Why does your business need SEO services?


We all know SEO is the only way to earn quality traffic and leads without spending anything. Therefore, it makes 100% sense to utilize this technique to increase the visibility of the site and improve your prominence among customers.

There are several reasons a business should think about investing in SEO:
  • It builds trust and credibility - users are more likely to trust a brand that appears on the top of SERP when they search for a term. It helps build awareness about your brand. People trust Google. So, by doing white hat SEO you can earn traffic for your site and credibility with your audience.
     
  • It has better ROI - SEO is one of the most cost-effective online marketing strategies because it targets customers who are actively looking for your products or services online. Also, SEO is cheaper, technically it costs nothing but your time to build permanent traffic on your website. SEO’s inbound nature helps businesses save money as opposed to outbound strategies like cold-calling.
     
  • Impacts buying cycle - Customers do their research before buying anything online. They prefer to gather more information before purchasing a product. That’s where you can step in and help them. Make your website information-rich with data, facts, and creatives. Write an in-depth and exhaustive post that will solve your customer’s queries and help them make a sound purchasing decision. If they like what they have read, they will surely trust your brand and buy from you. Achieving first ranking on SERP is essential for your business if you want customers who are actively searching out your products to be able to find you.


There are several other enticing reasons to invest in SEO. But before you decide to outsource your SEO requirements, make sure you hire a professional SEO agency in Houston, USA.


In Conclusion


There are several factors that affect your SEO ranking, but the most important aspect is your content. Make sure the content you create is original, unique and helpful for your audience. The more quality content you produce frequently, the better it is for your website’s health.

While it takes months, and years to see SEO results, in the end, it is all worth it!

Happy SEO

Related Post

RECENT UPDATES AND PERSPECTIVES

Privacy Policy

Effective date: December 02, 2018

Artistic Bird (us, we, or our) operates the https://www.artisticbird.com website (the "Service").

This privacy policy has been ordered to more readily serve individuals who are worried about how their Personally identifiable information (PII) is being utilized on the web. As used in US protection law and data security, PII can be utilized alone or with other data to distinguish, contact, or find a solitary individual or recognize a person in a setting. Kindly read our security strategy cautiously to get a reasonable comprehension of how we gather, use, ensure, or handle your Personally Identifiable Information as per our site.

We use your data to provide and improve the Service. Using the Service, you agree to this policy's collection and use of information. Unless otherwise defined in this Privacy Policy, terms used in this Privacy Policy have the same meanings as in our Terms and Conditions, accessible from https://www.artisticbird.com.

Information Collection And Use

We collect several different types of information for various purposes to provide and improve our Service to you.

Types of Data Collected

 

Personal Data

While using our Service, we may ask you to provide us with certain personally identifiable information that can be used to contact or identify you ("Personal Data"). Personally identifiable information may include, but is not limited to:

  • Email address
  • First name and last name
  • Phone number
  • Cookies and Usage Data
Usage Data

We may also collect information on how the Service is accessed and used ("Usage Data"). This Usage Data may include information such as your computer's Internet Protocol address (e.g. IP address), browser type, browser version, the pages of our Service that you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages, unique device identifiers and other diagnostic data.

Tracking & Cookies Data

We use cookies and similar tracking technologies to track the activity on our Service and hold certain information.

Cookies are files with a small amount of data, including a unique anonymous identifier. Cookies are sent to your browser from a website and stored on your device. Tracking technologies also used are beacons, tags, and scripts to collect and track information and improve and analyze our Service.

You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, you may not use some portions of our Service if you do not accept cookies.

Examples of Cookies we use:

  • Session Cookies. We use Session Cookies to operate our Service.
  • Preference Cookies. We use Preference Cookies to remember your preferences and various settings.
  • Security Cookies. We use Security Cookies for security purposes.

Please visit our Cookies Policy Page for more information about the cookies we use and your choices regarding cookies.

Use of Data

Artistic Bird uses the collected data for various purposes:

  • To provide and maintain the Service
  • To notify you about changes to our Service
  • To allow you to participate in interactive features of our Service when you choose to do so
  • To provide customer care and support
  • To provide analysis or valuable information so that we can improve the Service
  • To monitor the usage of the Service
  • To detect, prevent and address technical issues
Transfer Of Data

Your information, including Personal Data, may be transferred to — and maintained on — computers outside your state, province, country, or other governmental jurisdiction where the data protection laws may differ from those from your jurisdiction.

If you are located outside India and choose to provide information to us, please note that we transfer the data, including Personal Data, to India and process it there.

Your consent to this Privacy Policy, followed by your submission of such information, represents your agreement to that transfer.

Artistic Bird will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and following this Privacy Policy. No transfer of your Personal Data will take place to an organization or country unless adequate controls exist, including the security of your data and other personal information.

Disclosure Of Data

Legal Requirements

Artistic Bird may disclose your Data in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to:

  • To comply with a legal obligation.
  • To protect and defend the rights or property of Artistic Bird.
  • To prevent or investigate possible wrongdoing in connection with the Service.
  • To protect the personal safety of users of the Service or the public.
  • To protect against legal liability.
Security Of Data

The security of your data is important to us, but remember that no method of transmission over the Internet or electronic storage is 100% secure. While we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your Personal Data, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

Service Providers

We may employ third-party companies and individuals to facilitate our Service ("Service Providers"), provide the Service on our behalf, perform Service-related services, or assist us in analyzing how our Service is used.

These third parties have access to your Personal Data only to perform these tasks on our behalf and are obligated not to disclose or use it for any other purpose.

Analytics

We may use third-party Service Providers to monitor and analyze the use of our Service.

  • Google Analytics
  • Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. Google uses the data collected to track and monitor the use of our Service. This data is shared with other Google services. Google may use the collected data to contextualize and personalize the ads of its advertising network.
  • You can opt-out of having made your activity on the Service available to Google Analytics by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on. The add-on prevents Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js, analytics.js, and dc.js) from sharing information with Google Analytics about visits activity.
  • For more information on the privacy practices of Google, please visit the Google Privacy & Terms web page: https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en.
Links To Other Sites

Our Service may contain links to other sites that we do not operate. If you click on a third-party link, you will be directed to that third-party's site. We strongly advise you to review the Privacy Policy of every site you visit.

We have no control over and assume no responsibility for third-party sites or services' content, privacy policies, or practices.

GDPR Privacy

Legal Basis for Processing Personal Data under GDPR

We may process Personal Data under the following conditions:

  • Consent: You have given Your consent for processing Personal Data for one or more specific purposes.
  • Performance of a contract: Provision of Personal Data is necessary for the performance of an agreement with You and/or for any pre-contractual obligations thereof.
  • Legal obligations: Processing Personal Data is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the Company is subject.
  • Vital interests: Processing Personal Data is necessary to protect Your vital interests or another natural person.
  • Public interests: Processing Personal Data is related to a task carried out in the public interest or the exercise of official authority vested in the Company.
  • Legitimate interests: Processing Personal Data is necessary for the legitimate interests pursued by the Company.

In any case, the Company will gladly help clarify the specific legal basis that applies to the processing, mainly whether the provision of Personal Data is a statutory or contractual requirement or a requirement necessary to enter into a contract.

Your Rights under the GDPR

The Company undertakes to respect your personal data confidentiality and guarantee. You can exercise Your rights.

You have the right under this Privacy Policy, and by law, if You are within the EU, to:

  • Request access to Your Personal Data. The right to access, update or delete the information We have on You. Whenever made possible, you can access, update or request the deletion of Your Personal Data directly within Your account settings section. Please contact us to assist you if you cannot perform these actions yourself. This also enables You to receive a copy of the Personal Data We hold about You.
  • Request correction of the Personal Data that We hold about You. You have the right to have any incomplete or inaccurate information. We hold about You corrected.
  • Object to processing of Your Personal Data. This right exists where we rely on legitimate interest as the legal basis for Our processing. There is something about Your particular situation which makes You want to object to our processing of Your Personal Data on this ground. You also have the right to object where We are processing Your Data for direct marketing purposes.
  • Request erasure of Your Personal Data. You have the right to ask Us to delete or remove Personal Data when there is no good reason for Us to continue processing it.
  • Request the transfer of Your Personal Data. We will provide to You, or to a third party You have chosen, Your Personal Data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Please note that this right only applies to automated information that You initially provided consent for Us to use or used the information to perform a contract with You.
  • Withdraw Your consent. You have the right to withdraw Your consent to use your Personal Data. If You cancel Your consent, We may not be able to provide You with access to certain specific functionalities of the Service.

Exercising Your GDPR Data Protection Rights

You may exercise your access rights, rectification, cancellation, and opposition by contacting Us. Please note that we may ask You to verify Your identity before responding to such requests. If You make a request, We will try our best to respond to You as soon as possible.

You have the right to complain to a Data Protection Authority about Our collection and use of Your Personal Data. If you are in the European Economic Area (EEA), please contact your local data protection authority in the EEA for more information.

COPPA (Children Online Privacy Protection Act)

Our Service does not address anyone under 18 ("Children").

We don't intentionally gather recognizable data from kids or anybody younger than 18. Please contact us if you are a parent or guardian and know that your Children have provided us with Personal Data. If we become mindful that we have collected Personal Data from children without confirmation verification of parental consent, we take steps to remove that information from our servers.

Changes To This Privacy Policy

We may update our Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page.

We will notify you via email and a prominent notice on our Service before the change becomes effective and update the "effective date" at the top of this Privacy Policy.

You are advised to review this Privacy Policy periodically for any changes. This Privacy Policy changes are effective when posted on this page.

Contact Us

If you have any questions regarding this Privacy Policy, you may contact us using the information below.

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