The Core Components of SEO (Search Engine Optimiziation)
Even though search engines like Google and Bing look at thousands of different factors to figure out where a page should rank for a specific keyword search, we find they all boil down into three core categories. Additionally, as Google updates its search algorithms with new factors, we find that their changes to improve the search experience continue to fall into the following three core areas:
Website Structure
Website structure entails how your website is designed as far as the coding structure and format, and also how easy and efficiently you can navigate your website using the menu items and internal links. The ultimate focus here should be on creating the best user experience (UX) possible while balancing and abiding by the latest standards in quality design and coding principles.
Layout involves how you organize your content on each page, which communicates to the search engines what is the most important material and what should users look at first and foremost. Think of it as a teacher instructing the students what material and concepts are the most important to grasp for the exam. By implementing SEO tags and structured data, you help search engines better understand the context of your content.
Sometimes the search engine crawlers (also called robots, spiders, bots etc.) need a bit more information in order to index (record and interpret for search engine results) correctly. This is where robot commands, schema, 301 redirects, sitemaps, image maps, vectors, entities, meta tags, and plenty of other useful SEO tools come in handy.
Content
Arguably the most important aspect on your website is the content itself. In regards to SEO, content is still king! To be considered important, content must be useful, relevant (both to the searches and to the rest of your site), unique, fresh, and organized and emphasized in a coherent and logical manner. Additionally, Google rewards content that prioritizes information gain.
Bear in mind that content includes more than just static text. In fact, search engines like Google place an exceptional amount of emphasis on the use of rich media like video, audio, and image content. Currently, using video on the web is being rewarded significantly as it creates a richer user experience and is often the preferred method of consuming educational information.
Site Credibility
Most people know that it is useful to have other websites post a link to your website purely based off the fact that people may follow it to your website. However, search engines also use links, citations, and mentions for determining your website’s importance. A search engine looks at how many sites are linking to yours, what they are saying about your website, and the credibility of the websites referencing yours. Anytime a website links to your website, it is called a backlink, which can significantly help your website.
In other words, if other credible websites show that your site is important by posting a link to yours, search engines take that into account when calculating your page rank. However, negative penalties do exist for simply trying to gain a large amount of irrelevant inbound links. Finding the balance of earning credible and useful inbound links are essential to building your website's authority on the internet.
Additionally, there are many other methods of increasing your website's credibility including reputation management.
A successful SEO strategy must must focus on all three core areas and their subsequent ranking factors.
