What is SEO and How it can help your business?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it’s not rocket science! Basically it is a measurable, repeatable process that is used to make search engines convinced that your web pages are worth showing in Google’s index.

Google uses a evolving and intelligent complex mathematical formula called an search algorithm to assigns a score to every website and every search people to do in Google to figure out which website should given priority  and best for what people are searching for. 

Imagine the algorithm like a collection of empty boxes. 

One box  gives you a score for the quality of your site, 

One box gives you a score for how many sites link to you, 

One box gives you a score for how people trust you. 

As a SEO Engineer, your job is to fill up more box in the algorithm than any other website. 

You can affect your search engine ranking by having the highest score by increasing the quality of your site, of having the highest score in terms of authority of your website, of having the highest score in terms of the most trusted store for that search that people are looking for. 

The good thing is that there are hundreds of boxes, and for every single one of these boxes these scores put together in the algorithm to figure out where you rank is an opportunity for you to fill it up and rank better. So optimizing your site for search results really means getting the highest score in as many of these points as you can.

Now, some boxes  are worth more than others, and the three main boxes that you need to be aware of for search rankings are

1. Quality
2. Trust
3. Authority. 

quality: what Google is trying to measure when they’re trying to figure out what sites should rank is offering something valuable or unique or interesting to googles searchers. 

For example: good content - if you are selling trousers and you are using the same typical description that every other trouser vendor is using on their website then you are not offering anything original to Google’s searchers. Even though your trousers might look pretty cool, the content is the same as everybody else’s, so Google has no way of telling that your trousers or your web site is better than anybody else’s. Instead, offer people interesting content. For example: offer them the ability to personalize their trouser. Give them information on how to wash it. What’s the thread count? Is it stain resistant? Is this something you should wear in the summer or is it more heavy for winter? Give people information, or even be more creative. Get people to share pictures of themselves wearing the trouser. Create a community of people who are interested in your product. Get a famous person to wear it and share that picture online. Do something different, do something unique. Show Google that you are different and better than the other search results.

Trust is another important box that you need to be aware of when you are trying to get your site to rank in Google. Google doesn’t want to show just any website to it’s searchers, it wants to show the best website to its searchers, and so it wants to show sites that are trustworthy. One thing Google has indicated it likes to do is penalize sites or stores or companies that consistently have poor reviews, so if you have many poor reviews, in time Google is going to figure out not to show your site in their rankings because Google doesn’t want to show those sites to their searchers. So prove to Google’s algorithm that you are trustworthy. Get other highly authoritative websites to link to you. Get newspaper articles, get industry links, get other trusted sites to link to you: partners, vendors, happy customers - get them to link to your website to show that you are highly credible and trustworthy.

And finally, the other really important box is authority. Google wants to show sites that are popular. If they can show the most popular trouser seller to people looking to buy trousers online, that’s the site they want to show. So you have to convince Google - send them signals that your site is the most popular site for the kind of trousers that you sell. Fill this box by building a fan base. Build a social network, get people to link to you, get people to share your trouser pages on their social network saying ‘I want this!’, get people to comment, leave testimonials, show pictures of themselves wearing the product or using the product, Create a fan-base and then rally them to link to you and talk about you. That’s how you prove to Google that you are trustworthy and authoritative.

So if you think about it, SEO is really just a process of proving to search engines that you are the best site, the most authoritative, the most trusted, the most unique and interesting site that they can offer to their customer - the searcher. Get people to talk about you, produce good quality content, get people to link to you, and Google will be more confident that you are the best result that they can offer to their searchers, and that’s when you will start ranking on the first page of Google.

At Lanka Websites and Solutions, we strive to provide our customers the best score on every possible ranking by adding our long experience on search engine optimization. We rank high for SEO Services in Sri Lanka and SEO Sri Lanka in Google. Its a testimony for our effective seo strategies. 

Source : https://www.shopify.com/videos/ecommerce-seo-101/what-is-seo-marketing-tutorial\