What is SEO

You are looking for some information on the web. A site catches your eye, it's among the top positions on the page and you click on it.

That site has done good optimization, that is, it has adopted good SEO strategies.

Difference between SEO, SEM, and SEA

SEO refers to the set of techniques that allows the optimization of one's website pages on search engines.

Technically, SEO is an acronym for search engine optimization, which means precisely a proper optimization on search engines and particularly on Google (the search engine par excellence).

SEO is a particular form of digital marketing that fits into a broader marketing strategy: SEM.

The difference between these three acronyms is significant.

If SEO is a strategy to give relevance and value to one's website, SEM, as mentioned, is the form of marketing that encompasses it. Search engine marketing indeed includes both SEO and SEA.

Let's summarize:

SEO is the activity that increases the value of a website in the eyes of Google in a completely organic way, meaning without any financial investment from the owner.

SEA, on the other hand, stands for search engine advertisement, and it includes all those paid campaigns that enhance and highlight the site thanks to economic investments.

The most used tool by SEA is Google ADS (Google's advertising network).

Hence, SEM encompasses both SEO and SEA.

SEO is the organic result on the SERP (yes, another strange term), while SEA involves inserting paid sponsored Google ADS campaigns.

The results that appear first on the SERP (we'll talk about this shortly) marked with a black label advertisement", are the ones that are paid for, while the others are organic (therefore determined by SEO).

Let's now put aside SEA and Google ADS, as it's not the topic we will discuss today, and delve deeper into the concept of SEO.

Strategies and types of SEO

The goal of SEO is to make your site's pages appear on specific queries (searches) on Google and other search engines (for example, on the query "how to succeed online" your dedicated post appears right after the ads).

The SERP, acronym for search engine result page, is the result that Google returns on a particular search query.

There are various factors that influence organic results on search engines.

SEO on-page factors

When Google's spider, defined as spider or crawler, analyzes the pages of your site, it expects certain elements arranged in precise ways. 

To facilitate "reading" by this Google analysis software, there are tricks and strategies to optimize one's web page.

The on-page SEO factors are those internal characteristics of your pages that enhance optimization for search engines.

• Conducting keyword research and strategically inserting them into the page
• Creating a logical and streamlined page structure
• Wise use of HTML tags
• Using a domain with certain characteristics
• Writing oriented towards SEO (SEO copywriting, we will talk about this shortly)
• Creating a fast and responsive website
• Optimizing images for name, attribute, alt text, and size

All these strategic elements allow your site to rank (i.e., move closer to the top position on the Google page for a given query).

In comparison to the list we've compiled, it's important to emphasize the characteristics that enhance the optimization of your website with respect to the domain.

To start from a solid foundation and make the most of all the SEO techniques, it is good practice to have a historical domain (that has not changed ownership).

The age of the domain also contributes to search engine optimization (to a small extent in reality) while the speed and reliability of the hosting are important.

Last but not least, the root of the domain: NO to subdomains such as www.mysite.blog.it, they are not looked upon favorably by Google!

Another very important factor for SEO is link generation and site URLs.

Having many internal links that redirect to other pages of the site is an excellent SEO technique, and page URLs should be consistent with the content of the page (for example www.mysite.com/how-to-succeed-online) and not have messy URLs with random numbers and letters.

The other important aspect for a proper SEO optimization of your page, is how it is implemented at the code level.

This is where SEO copywriting comes into play.

SEO copywriting: the quintessential on-page tool

SEO copywriting refers to the writing of pages and articles with an SEO orientation.

All our articles, for example, are designed to enhance the site's SEO.

Let's now analyze how to do SEO copywriting.

First of all, it is important to always perform a strategic keyword study that allows their inclusion, without exaggeration, in the article.

The html tags are studied in great detail.

The titles of the articles are designed to facilitate reading and interpretation by Google's spider of the page (the h1s).

The other subheadings (h2, h3, h4, h5 or h6) focus on deepening the topic (what is SEO for a very fitting example!)

Keywords should be linked to others that present synonyms of the same term and phrases connected at a semantic level.

Off-page SEO factors

We have extensively analyzed on-page SEO factors, but we must undoubtedly mention off-page SEO factors, which are those external elements to the website that enhance search engine optimization.

We discussed the relevance of your business on social media, but in off-page factors, we mainly find link building.

The techniques we listed are so-called white hat SEO (literally white hat techniques), meaning the correct and clean ones.

However, there are other techniques, which were overused in previous years, that now entail a penalty by Google.

Black hat SEO techniques.

Black hat SEO techniques (black hat tactics) include keyword stuffing (the obsessive and excessive repetition of the keyword without using synonyms), the practice of hiding text and links in web pages, cloaking (a computer technique that shows Google a different page than the actual content through scripts) and buying links or engaging in low-quality link building.

Google algorithm updates and the importance of content

Google often changes its algorithm. These updates, which almost always bear the names of animals or have grandiose titles, encompass one major reflection.

Google has become a thinking machine that reasons in a human way.

The basic rule is: quality content always wins!

For Google, it is essential to provide answers to users' search queries and, therefore, if your page is correctly optimized and has content that is more useful and informative than others, then you will be first on that search query!