SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, that is optimising websites for search engines — a series of activities aimed at preparing a site so that it is able to reach the highest possible positions in a search engine's results while complying with that engine's rules.
Proper SEO work is the foundation of effective website positioning. For low-competition keywords, on-page optimisation alone can improve a site's rankings for many keywords. Optimising a website and the positioning that follows is an undertaking whose results we only begin to observe after several weeks, or even months.
In short
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the optimisation of a website for search engines — a set of technical, content and link-building activities that help a site reach the highest possible positions in Google in line with its guidelines. Results usually appear after a few weeks to a few months and include more traffic, higher sales and better brand recognition.
SEO – what for and what can you gain?
The main goal of SEO activities:
– achieving high positions in search results,
– increasing the number of visits to the site,
– promoting the goods, services or information featured on the site.
Benefits that proper website optimisation brings:
– an increased number of user visits to the site,
– increased sales of goods or services,
– brand recognition,
– gaining expert status and a larger number of followers (in the case of a blog or news service).
Elements to pay attention to when optimising a site for SEO:
Optimising the content on the site
– reviewing the content for keywords,
– making sure it is original and valuable to the user,
– applying a heading hierarchy,
– ensuring the text is clear: using emphasis and bullet points,
– building the site menu properly.
Appropriate page title tags
The title tag is the place where it is worth putting a keyword related to the content of a given page, preferably right at the very beginning. Because page titles are visible in search results, it is also worth making sure they contain your company name. Search results display only titles that do not exceed 55 characters, so they should be concise and describe the content of the page. You also need to remember that the titles of all subpages should be unique — that is, they simply should not be the same.
Meta description tags
The meta description is the description shown in search results, just below the title and the URL of the page. The content of the description matters: the message it carries can influence and encourage an internet user to visit your particular site. If your site is not in the TOP 3 but has an attention-grabbing description, it can still generate a lot of traffic. It is therefore worth spending a little time so that this element is filled in carefully and promotes your company as well as possible.
URLs
The URL of each subpage of a site should be relevant to the content of the page and describe its content as accurately as possible (this is what is known as a "friendly URL"). When creating such an address, you need to take into account both the user and the Google robots that will be verifying your site.
A URL optimised for SEO consists of a maximum of 100 characters and contains no special characters (such as @, $, etc.) or Polish diacritical marks (ś, ć, ż, ą, ę, etc.).
An example of a correct URL could be, for instance, https://semtak.pl/en/services/websites-and-stores/wordpress-website-development/. It is short, contains no special characters and informs the internet user very well about the content of the page.
Image optimisation
Properly optimised images make a given website load faster. This is important both for the visitor's experience and for the search engine itself. The most important actions include: scaling the dimensions, compressing the file size, choosing the right format and file name, and filling in the ALT attributes.
Linking between pages
A very important element of SEO is internal linking, that is simply linking between the individual pages of a site. Placing a menu on the site together with links to all sections already provides this. In addition, it is worth placing links to subpages on similar topics — for example, in blog articles by including linked "See also" text. In online stores these can be links to similar products or complementary products that we place on the page of a specific product or service.
In summary
The term SEO is often confused with the term positioning. These two processes are closely related to each other. The SEO activities described in this article are among the tools used to achieve the goals of positioning. SEO is the refining of a website, preparing it so that the next step of online promotion — positioning — brings results that satisfy us.
