What is SEO

What exactly does SEO stand for? And how can you apply it properly? What is SEO marketing? SEO is the foundation of your website and onder supports your online marketing strategy! The ultimate goal of SEO is to make your website more findable in Google.

If you want to generate more visitors to your website zonder to advertise, you need to get started with SEO. We will tell you exactly what it entails so that by the end of our story, you can answer the question "what is SEO?" yourself.

Meaning SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, or search engine optimisation. Marketers involved in this try to achieve high search engine positions on key search terms. You can achieve this by optimising your website.

What is SEO? And what is SEO marketing? SEO (search engine optimisation) consists of onderand onder parts:

Content

When asked 'what is SEO', many people will immediately think of content. The content on your website is super important. In it, you answer the question your visitor is looking for. Content is also incredibly important for Google.

Technical optimisation

Besides content, it is also very important that your website is technically sound. If this is not the case, search engine robots may not even be able to access your website. So get to work and make sure your website is technically sound. This is tricky and is often where a SEO specialist comes in. (Also SEO agency Onder can help with this!). We onder supports continuously at technical SEO, but onder also supports when exporting successful SEO migrations. Also, click on the links if you want to know more about this.

Authority

Perhaps the trickiest onder part of SEO: authority. Here you can think of valuable links to your website. Referring links determine the authority of your website. When your website is seen as an authority, you are more likely to have better visibility in the search engines. Likes, shares and fame on social media can also influence your search engine rankings. Linkbuilding is an important onder part of our work.

Getting started with SEO

We have answered the question above: what is SEO marketing? and what does SEO mean? Hereonder, we will explain what is important when you get started with SEO. Keep in mind that SEO is not a 'quick-fix'. Getting started with SEO gives long-term results. How fast SEO gives results, depends on all kinds of factors like competition, search terms, search query etc. Get started with onderaand onder parts and you'll be well on your way to top search engine rankings!

Search term analysis

Finding and analysing the best search terms for your website is the first step of a successful SEO journey. Which search terms suit your website and your product or service? An analysis of the most important search terms (also known as search queries or keywords) provides important insight into the search behaviour of your target audience.

Finding search terms can be done in many ways, as there are several tools for this (Google suggest, Google's keyword planner, Ahrefs, SEMrush etc.).

When selecting the best search terms for your website, pay attention to search volume and competition. If a search term has a very high search volume, you can assume that there is also a lot of competition for that keyword. In that case, it can be difficult for a new, 'unknown' page to score a high position for that keyword.

So consider carefully which keywords are important to you and where you want to invest time and effort. It is worth considering keywords with less search volume and competition so that you can achieve a good position on them.

See how to figure out search queries from Google yourself.

Meta tags: the first contact with your visitor

The first contact between your website and the visitor are the meta tags: the title of the page, the description and the URL. Make sure the page's search term appears in them, that it is clear what the page is about and that it is catchy. After all, you want them to click through to your website!

Tips for writing meta tags:

• Make sure the search term you want to optimise the page for appears once in both the description and the title (and preferably in front!).
• Write an easy-to-read story
• In the description, put a call to action that invites the reader to go further.
• Make use of symbols. After all, this stands out!

Writing and improving content

Conversion is obviously the most important thing, that's where you want to go. Your visitor comes to your website and has a question/problem. He or she wants to know something and you want to give the best possible answer. So think carefully about how you are going to write the text! Make sure you write the text for your reader. What do you actually want him to do on your page and how can you use text to contribute to this?

It is also important that you optimise the text for Google as well. This means optimising the text with the search term for this page. This may sound complicated! How do you go about it? You can read this in our approach for 'writing for SEO in 6 steps'.

Internal links

Internal links are an important onder part of SEO. It helps the search engines index your website better and improve ranking on those search terms.
So have you written a landing page about a particular onderwerp? Then onderling also link to another onderwerp/service that might also be of interest to the visitor.

Local findability

Also an important onder part of 'what is SEO', is the local findability! People often search online for local businesses. If you use this properly, you will ensure that your website appears higher in local search results. Search engines like Google use location data to show the most relevant search results.

For example, you are away for the weekend and would like to eat out. You Googled 'restaurant + relevant city' and Google immediately shows a map with all the nearest restaurants.

How to tackle this? Read this further in our blog on Local seo with 'Google my business'.

Technology

Speed
The speed of your website is important for your position in the search engines (and therefore for SEO). A long load time means a poor user experience. As a result, Google is less likely to recommend your website in search results.

The speed of your website has to do with the technical side. A good starting point to see if your website is up to speed is to analyse it. This can be done, for example, with TestMySite or PageSpeed Insights. Then start working with the results! Can't do it yourself? Then have a technical SEO check done by a SEO specialist. Onder can help with this.

Ease of use
 Website technology contributes to the user experience. Search engines like to redirect visitors to pages with a positive user experience. Hereonder some tips for improving user experience:

• Ensure fast loading time (as mentioned earlier)
• Create a clear, simple and uncluttered menu structure
•  A 'breadcrumb trail' allows users to easily navigate through your site
• Mobile: make sure your website is easy to use on mobile. (buttons big enough? Not too close together?)
• Navigate your visitor through your website.

Indexation
Do your pages show up in Google's index? If this is not the case, you can optimise all you want, but it will not yield results. When this is the case, there could be a number of reasons:

• The settings of robots.txt are such that all or part of the website should not be indexed.
• Robots Metatags: exclusion from indexing can also be done at the page level. This allows certain pages to be excluded from indexing.

Collecting backlinks

Google values reliability and authority. So get links from companies that are relevant and can contribute to your link profile. The more reliable a website is, the more expertise it contains. The more reliable links to your website, the more recommendations you will get.

How to tackle this? You can read about it in our tips for getting more links.

What is SEO?

SEO is not always easy, but very important for the success of your business. Would you like help with this? Are you still wondering 'what is SEO marketing?' Or would you like to know how your website is SEO? Our SEO specialists will be happy to work with you to ensure that your website can achieve a better ranking. Our SEO audit provides a clear overview of all points of interest.

Feel free to take contact on with us!