In digital marketing, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a basic but powerful strategy for building online success. At its core, SEO helps websites attract more visitors, show up higher in search results, and connect with people looking for their services or products without relying on paid ads.
A well-optimised website naturally ranks higher, making it easier for potential customers to find and engage with your business.
This guide will explain how SEO works, the steps search engines take to decide which websites deserve a top spot, and how you can use SEO to grow your online presence.
How SEO Works
SEO works by optimising a website’s content, web structure, and technical elements to make it more appealing to search engines like Google. The idea is to fulfil a set of criteria and “checklists” set by search engines to rank higher on websites.
When search engines analyse your website, they consider numerous factors like keywords, backlinks, user experience, and accessibility. These elements work together to improve a website’s visibility on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), driving organic traffic, improving online reputation, and, ideally, ranking on the first page of SERPs.
Every SEO operator’s goal is to bridge the gap between what users are searching for and how your website delivers answers to those queries.
In essence, SEO in digital marketing involves aligning your website with search engine standards while keeping your audience’s needs front and centre.
10 Ways Search Engines Rank Your Website
From a search engine’s perspective, determining a website’s rankings is meticulous and lengthy. With roughly 1.1 billion websites around the world, search engines like Google prioritise the most relevant and valuable sites for users to satisfy their queries and problems.
Here are ten ways search engines rank your website.
1. Crawling: Search Engines Discover Your Content
Search engines work by using automated programs, affectionately called crawlers or spiders. These critters explore the vast internet and find content. They follow links between web pages to discover new content or updates to existing ones.
For example, when a page includes internal links to other parts of the website or links to external sites, it creates a path for crawlers to navigate like a tunnel.
If your website is well-structured, with a clean layout, proper internal linking, and a sitemap, it becomes much easier for these crawlers to find and analyse your content. A sitemap acts as a guide, listing all the important pages on your site so that crawlers don’t miss anything important.
Without this map, search engines won’t know your pages exist, meaning they can’t evaluate or include them in search results. So, the first step of any SEO effort is ensuring that search engines discover your content easily.
2. Indexing: Storing And Organising Data
Once search engines discover your web pages through crawling, the next step is indexing. Indexing is how search engines store and organise the information they’ve found to retrieve it quickly when someone searches for something related. It essentially acts as a digital library where each web page is catalogued based on content and relevance.
To be indexed and included in this database, a page must meet certain quality standards. Search engines look for unique and original content that provides real value to users. If your page contains duplicate content, broken links, or incomplete titles, it may be excluded from the index, making it invisible in search results.
Proper formatting also helps, as the more information you give to search engines, the easier it is for them to catalogue you. Clear headings, accurate descriptions, and well-organised information help search engines understand the purpose of your page.
So, make sure your site is informative and well-structured. This will improve its chances of being indexed and eventually appearing in search results when users look for topics related to your content.
3. Ranking: Determining Page Position On Search Results
After indexing a page, the next step is determining where it should appear on SERPS. Should it rank first or third? This process, known as ranking, involves search engines analysing hundreds of factors to decide how relevant and valuable a page is for a specific query.
Ranking is a very competitive process, and getting the top spot on Google can be challenging, but it can be done with the right techniques and implementations.
Key factors that influence rankings include how closely your content matches the searcher’s query, the strategic use of relevant keywords, and the overall authority of your website. Authority, in particular, is built over time and is influenced by factors such as the quality of your content, backlinks from reputable websites, and user engagement metrics like time spent on the page.
Ranking algorithms are designed to weigh all these factors and assign a position to each page in the search results. Pages deemed more relevant and trustworthy are placed higher on the SERPs, while less relevant or lower-quality pages are ranked further down.
It should go without saying that users click on results near the top of the page. Most people rarely scroll beyond the first few results, making a high ranking critical for visibility and traffic.
4. Keyword Integration: Matching Content To User Queries
When users search for something online, they use specific words or phrases, and search engines look for pages that contain those same terms. The strategic use of keywords in your content makes your page relevant to what users are searching for.
The most effective way to integrate keywords is to place them naturally in important parts of your page, such as titles, headings, meta descriptions, and the main body. This helps search engines recognise your page’s topic and makes it easier for users to understand what your page offers.
However, it’s important not to overuse keywords, also known as “keyword stuffing.” Search engines can detect when keywords are stuffed unnaturally into content, which can hurt your ranking instead of helping it.
The goal is to incorporate keywords naturally where they make sense and create genuine, great content that users find intriguing and helpful.
5. On-Page Optimisation: Refining Individual Pages
On-page optimisation focuses on improving what site owners control. This process involves refining various elements on your page, from the content to its structure and technical components. Search engines will gauge on-page elements to see if they meet users’ expectations before ranking them. These elements include:
Content quality: Search engines prioritise content that provides valuable, relevant, and clear information.
Page Structure: Clear headings and logical organisation make navigating and understanding your content more accessible for search engines.
Title tags and Meta Description: These tags give search engines and users a quick summary of what your page is about. A compelling title tag can increase click-through rates, while an informative meta description can encourage users to visit your site.
User Experience: Search engines reward pages that are easily read, visually clean, and mobile-friendly. Ensuring fast load times and intuitive navigation further enhances user satisfaction and, by extension, your rankings.
6. Backlinks: Building Authority And Endorsement
Search engines see backlinks (links from another website to yours) as endorsements. When a reputable and relevant website links to your content, it signals to search engines that your page offers value and can be trusted. This is a metric search engines use to determine whether your site is trustworthy or credible in your industry.
The quality of backlinks matters more than quantity, so a few links from respected industry titans carry far more weight than hundreds of links from subpar-quality sites.
By earning backlinks from various trusted sources, you show search engines that your content is relevant and valued by others in your field. The more authoritative and relevant links you gain, the higher your chances of ranking well for the keywords and topics that matter most to your audience.
So, if you want to build up link authority, start by collaborating with businesses in your industry and establish yourself as a reputable go-to source of information to tell websites your site is trusted and valuable.
7. User Engagement: Measuring How Visitors Interact With Your Site
Search engines would analyse how much engagement a website gets to gauge its relevance and quality. Users interacting positively with your site inform search engines that your content meets their needs. There are a few metrics that serve as indicators of user engagement. This includes:
Time Spent On A Page: The duration of a visitor staying on a page. The longer they stay, the better.
Bounce Rate: The rate of users leaving without interacting further. This tells search engines that the landing page that clicked on didn’t meet their expectations. Search engines pay attention to these patterns and may adjust rankings accordingly.
Click-through rate (CTR): If more users click on your site when it shows up on their SERPs, search engines interpret this as a sign that your content is attracting interest and providing value.
Websites can include clear CTAs, user-friendly navigation, and persuasive copy to encourage user engagement. The goal is to make a user interact with your website in any way possible, which generates interest and future conversions.
8. Technical SEO: Improving Website Accessibility
If your website doesn’t work as intended, search engines and users will leave quickly out of frustration or impatience. Google does not favour poorly optimised websites in its rankings, and technical SEO is all about making your website more accessible and efficient for both search engines and users.
While it might not be as visible as creating content or building backlinks, addressing the technical aspects ensures that your site is easy to navigate, loads quickly, and meets the standards that search engines prioritise.
Page load speed: Websites that load quickly provide a better user experience and perform better in search rankings. Search engines know that users will likely leave a slow site, favouring faster ones
.
Website Security: Using HTTPS ensures your site is encrypted and safe for users. Many browsers flag non-secure sites, which can drive visitors away when they see they are potentially entering a non-secure site.
Structured Data: By adding structured data, you can provide detailed information about your website, such as product details, reviews, or FAQs, directly in the search results.
9. Fresh Content: Staying Relevant To Search Engines And Users
Search engines value websites that regularly publish fresh, high-quality content. Whether creating new articles or updating existing ones with new information, updates tell Google that you are dedicated to providing users value and keeping in touch with current market needs.
When you add fresh content, you also create more opportunities for your website to target new keywords.
For example, if your site keeps adding new content that reflects current social trends, search engines recognise your efforts to stay relevant and reward your site with better rankings, thus leading to more traffic.
Consistency is key. Search engines favour sites that regularly update their content instead of posting sporadically or leaving outdated pages untouched. This practice helps maintain rankings and ensures your site remains valuable to users and search engines.
10. Algorithm Adaptation: Keeping Up With Search Engine Updates
To solve a problem, you first must understand what the problem is. So, if you want to optimise your SEO, staying informed about the latest algorithm updates is not just a technical necessity—it’s a strategic advantage. At the end of the day, your optimisation can only do so much, and search engines will ultimately be the ones to determine your site rank.
Search engine algorithms are a closely guarded secret; no one knows how to game the system. However, they do offer guidance on best practices, like Google Search Essentials.
Adapting to algorithm changes isn’t about tearing your site down and building a new one. Often, it’s about fine-tuning your current approach to see what works best for your site. Small minor improvements are often better than drastic ones that could throw off the search engine’s ability to crawl and index your page.
For digital marketers, this means consistently monitoring their site’s performance to improve and adapt to changing algorithms.
Conclusion On How SEO Works In Digital Marketing
SEO is an ever-evolving digital marketing strategy. Numerous factors influence it, and the digital space is always grappling with new innovations and breakthroughs. The key is to remain agile, adaptable, and adamant, paying close attention to industry trends, emerging keywords, and what the market demands from you.
Yet, SEO is undeniably time-consuming and technically complex. With so many elements to consider, it can be daunting for business owners to handle everything all at once.
That’s why we are here to help. Best SEO has a team of SEO specialists dedicated to helping our clients achieve tangible and quantifiable results. We know that you want leads, sales, and revenue, which is why we are making you an offer you can’t refuse.
Give us 90 days, and we guarantee your website will be on the first page of Google. If we don’t meet that expectation, you pay nothing.
Frequently Asked Questions In Digital Marketing
Should You Use Exact Match Keywords In Content?
Not always. It’s more effective to use natural variations that match people’s search patterns. This approach avoids keyword stuffing and enhances readability.
What Is The Difference Between On-Page And Off-Page SEO?
On-page SEO focuses on elements within your website, such as content and HTML tags, while off-page SEO involves external factors like backlinks and brand mentions. One you can control, one you can’t.
Is Keyword Density Still Relevant For SEO?
To an extent. Use keywords often but avoid keyword stuff since it can harm rankings. Focus on natural, context-driven keyword integration.
What Are LSI Keywords and How Do They Help SEO?
Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords are related terms that add context to your content, helping search engines understand its relevance and topic depth.
Are Long-Form Articles Better for SEO?
It depends. Long-form articles often perform well because they provide comprehensive information, but quality and relevance matter more than length alone.
Is Social Media Activity A Ranking Factor?
While not a direct ranking factor, social media can drive traffic and increase content visibility, indirectly supporting SEO efforts.