What Is SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?

What Is SEO - All efforts and efforts aimed at placing websites on organic search results pages (Google SERP) for the keywords that we want, that's what SEO means.

SEO, short for "Search Engine Optimization" or search engine optimization is one of the most primitive traffic sources in the digital marketing world. He was born, grew, developed and evolved together with the world's top search engine: Google.

But even so, the fact is that Google is still the # 1 website in the world so that the available traffic potential is the biggest among various other choices, whatever the latest.

So important is SEO.
In this post we will discuss the understanding and various information about SEO that must be known by all digital marketers, including you.

What is SEO?

There are many definitions of SEO from various experts.

According to Brian Dean, founder of Backlinko, SEO is an art and science to bring targeted visitors organically to a website through a search engine.

For example: You might come to this page through Google when searching for information about "What is SEO" or "SEO is" or "Understanding SEO".

Of course, this page does not appear just like that in Google search results for those keywords if I don't do a variety of optimizations, including the simplest:

The entire set of businesses mentioned above was carried out in order to place this page in the top rankings of Google search for the keywords I wanted, in this case: "What is SEO".

The goal is none other than not to get traffic / visitors like you for free from search engines without having to pay a dime ad. The type of traffic that comes from SEO is called "organic", as opposed to "paid" traffic that usually comes from advertisements.

Then the important question now:

Whether without doing SEO, this page can be ranked in Google's disbursement results for the keywords above?

The answer : It's possible.

Of course as long as I create content related to the keywords above.

But try to imagine, without SEO, some of the following trivial things will most likely occur:

Permalinks that are not search engine friendly:
There are no adequate keywords in the article
No picture
Don't use tags
There is no inner and outer links
etc

Logically, the above things have a negative impact on the website. Because he not only confused Google to give rank but also bad experiences for visitors which had fatal consequences for the position of a website on the search page for the long term.

In fact, if we understand the basic principles of SEO, without having to be good at it, implementing SEO is actually not difficult to do.

You don't even need anyone's services or help, because SEO can be learned by anyone and done alone.

Why SEO?

SEO potential is clearly extraordinary so there is no reason for you to ignore it, especially for you website owner.

The two most important :

- The biggest cake: more than 70% of traffic in cyberspace comes from search engines.
- Most convertible traffic: when people search for something through Google, it means that they are in need of that information.

And when people search for products or services through Google, it's likely that they're also needing a fast solution. Some keywords such as product reviews, advantages, best discounts, certainly have a very high buying intent.

Compare that with an advertisement that still comes in front of us without being asked.


In addition, SEO is also the most concise answer to the underlying problem for almost all website owners who:

- Do not have an adequate budget to pay for expensive SEO professional services.
- Cannot operate paid advertisements.
- Want to rank on the first page of Google for the desired keyword.
- Get traffic from search engines for free in the long run.
- Even for you paid ad users, for whatever your budget is, take the time to study and do SEO will never lose because of the long-term benefits that can be given to your website organically.

Remember, paid traffic will die instantly when money runs out and ads are stopped. But traffic from SEO will remain or even more in the long run when it is done well. The investment will not make a loss.

50% of SEO is Keyword Research

Until here, you should already know the meaning of SEO.

Then how to do it?, Start with keywords.

By mastering keyword research, you have completed half of SEO. My advice, prioritize first to learn about how to research keywords before learning other things from SEO.

2019 Search Engine Algorithm

Procedures and logic for sorting any webpages that appear in search results for a keyword, are generally referred to as search engine algorithms.

For Google, it is a super sophisticated RankBrain.

In 2019 and in the coming years, Google's algorithm will focus more on the website visitor experience than any other factor.

In other words, nothing is more important and more meaningful than: Content.

Thus, the Dwell time or duration of a person's stop on a website page that appears on the SERP becomes the most important factor in SEO.

The logic is, the longer someone is on a page, the more relevant the content is on that page. And vice versa.

Here are some notes about Google's current algorithm:

Content is the main thing.
Dwell time is the most important parameter, so pay attention:
Content: headline, content, relevance, writing style, depth, copywriting. Read: how to create content for SEO.
Non Content: access speed, design, font type, color, buttons, etc.

Onpage & Offpage SEO

Broadly speaking, there are 2 kinds of optimization that can be done, namely:

1. Onpage SEO - All optimization activities that are on our own web
2. Offpage SEO - All optimization activities that are outside our web.

The two optimizations above are equally important.

But if you read carefully this note from above and understand what SEO is, then you should prioritize SEO onpage.

Here are some notes that you need to know:

- After mastering Research keywords, understanding onpage SEO is the second thing that must be learned.
- Understanding both of them (without offpage SEO) is more than enough for you to implement SEO on your web.
- Besides being important, online SEO is also easier to do because you can do it independently and not depend on other parties.
- Meanwhile, offpage SEO can be done as a vitamin to boost web position.

In principle :  offpage optimization is done after onpage.

You may get too many pieces of information about backlinks, how great it is, how the current tricks to build backlinks, edu links, gov, wikis, Angela press releases & Paul links, and other good things to create a rank site in the future fast even overnight.


I say, forget it all.

If your content is bad and onpage optimization is inadequate, however great offpage optimization (in this case link building) will not be too useful. Even if your web can rank on the first page of Google because of the amazingly great backlinks, then as soon as it does it will sink and disappear far behind. What's wrong is getting a penalty and the Google Sandbox (disappearing from Google forever).

Indeed, in 2019 and in the future, the role of backlinks in offpage SEO is no longer like before. There are only a few models left that are still feasible to do, including Guest post and 2 ways: see here and here.

Offpage is not only backlinks. Besides bakclinks, of course the penetration of content on social media, both the number of likes and shares is also an important factor in modern SEO offpage optimization.

The discussion about Onpage and Offpage SEO requires considerable space and will be covered in a special chapter at length along with their respective checklist.

Conclusion

Semantically, SEO which ends with the word "optimization" or "optimization" in Indonesian is a verb. It is action and action.

So the best way to understand, learn and understand SEO is to apply all the theories and technical instructions provided (as long as they make sense) directly on the web that you have. And even though technology continues to grow, in fact the fundamentals of SEO have not changed much since the first time he was known.