SEO, also known as Search Engine Optimization, is defined by the process of increasing a website’s exposure on search engines and its traffic through organic results. According to a recent finding shared by Forbes, 92% of internet users only scroll through the first page of Google search results. That is why SEO is labeled as one of the most crucial digital marketing strategies in the business community – everyone wants to get a higher website ranking for more visibility to a broader audience.

Before doing anything though, you first need to get the gist of what SEO is composed of. Generally speaking, SEO has 2 branches – On-page SEO and Off-page SEO.

1) On-page SEO

On-page SEO refers to all digital actions you take on your website to optimize its structure and content. What kind of structure, you may ask? Well, imagine your website is a house. A well-optimized website is a rigid and well-structured house. What it takes to build a good “virtual house” is that it has to be (i) secured, (ii) crawlable by search engine bots, and (iii) mobile-friendly. (iv) The loading speed of the website, URLs, and anchor texts are also key to a website’s ranking. Essentially, you want your website link to make sense just from reading the link itself.

Apart from the outer structure, you also need good furniture to build a good house – and it is the same for a website. In order to achieve SEO, the content you input should be relevant to your audience and up-to-date. Good content can be anything, it can be a video, an image, or a blog. As long as it is capable of answering someone’s question, it is considered as good content. Bear in mind that good content should also come with an effective title tag! A title tag is a topic line that displays on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). It is crucial to your website’s SEO because (a) It is Search Engine friendly, (b) it is sharable, and (c) it attracts the audience to visit your site for a certain purpose.

2) Off-page SEO

Contrary to On-page SEO, Off-page SEO is the activities you perform outside your website, that can include building backlinks, developing your brand’s reputation in the online community, as well as off-page marketing.

Backlinks are the fundamental factor when it comes to off-page SEO. By definition, Backlinks are outside links that lead back to pages on your website’s domain. Some methods of building backlinks include manually create links on business directories, blogs, and forums, etc. to bring more people to your website. But please keep this in mind, do not overuse or abuse this method because you don’t want to get penalized by search engines like Google. After all, you want to attract your audience, not trick them to your page, right? And when you gradually build your positive image and trustworthiness online, people like bloggers and social media influencers would start sharing and mentioning your brand for higher publicity.

Another action you want to take for off-page SEO is social media marketing. Nowadays, social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram encompass millions of active monthly users. By exposing yourself to a more extensive market and engaging with more people, it is possible to increase your chance of gaining potential prospects and leads.