A search for "search engine optimization (SEO)", or "how to rank my website higher in Google results", will return a plethora of information. SEO has become a hyped topic among digital marketers, traditional marketing executives, and industry leaders. That’s understandable considering SEO services by an SEO company can provide a business with long-term free advertising. Sure, you could pay to rank your webpage at the top of search engine result pages (SERPs), but displaying those pages at an elevated position naturally (or organically) can take your business from a struggling upstart, to an industry leader. In addition to various tools, guides, and other informational material, you’ll see results for search engine optimization companies (SEOs) throughout the world. An SEO company (SEOs) is a firm which specializes in helping your business rank higher in SERPs Specifically, the focus is usually on Google. This is because Google dominates the search engine market.
But what is SEO and how do SEOs help your brand rank higher in SERPs?
First, at least at a high level, it’s important to understand how search engines work. Search engines build automation tools (bots) which journey across the world wide web searching for high-quality webpages and profile pages. Note two keywords in the previous sentence: 1) high-quality and 2) webpages. Search engines don’t rank, display, or return websites. Search engines return webpages and profile pages (more on these later). Websites are a collection of webpages linked together.
The mission of search engine developers is to provide users with high-quality results. They want their users to find what they’re looking for quickly, and to ensure the result is trustworthy and pertinent to their inquiry. Over the years, Google has become particularly adept at not only displaying rich SERPs, but they even predict/suggest keywords and phrases as you search. It’s no surprise that Google has become the world leader in preferred search engines. Other popular search engines are Bing, Yahoo!, and more recently, Duck Duck Go.
A search engine bot is built on algorithms (or algos). Algorithm is just a sophisticated way to say, a carefully crafted amalgam of logic and digital techniques. The algos will scan webpages for keywords, phrases, images, and other elements, which are then indexed (or stored into a database) for retrieval when a search engine visitor searches (or queries) their preferred search engine. Search engines store vast amounts of information from how to articles, to full historical dissertations on the history of the world. A search engine, then, is the library of the digital age and the Yellow Pages of the modern era.
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As mentioned above, search engines want to provide their users with high-quality results. Over the years, search engines have made giant leaps to provide their users with better results. The major search engines even worked together to develop a protocol that website designers can use to speak more directly to search engine bots. This protocol promotes, "…schemas for structured data on the Internet, on web pages, in email messages, and beyond." (Source) In layman’s terms, this means a structured format for providing a description and other pertinent details about a webpage to the search bot. What’s important is that Schema was founded by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex. In other words, all the major search engines not only support Schema, but they want you to use it.
Two additional critical changes have occurred within the past decade:
Google made it a hard requirement to only index webpages with TLS certificates (or websites which leverage a secure layer on the http protocol). To a regular user of the web, you may notice a website address, or uniformed resource locator (URL), may begin with an http or https. The "s" in "https" represents secure. URL’s containing https, are leveraging a TLS certificate.
TLS provides a secure connection between you (or your browser) and the webpage (web server). It encrypts, or hides, data transferred between your browser and the web server from malicious actors. In the past, TLS was typically reserved for webpages which processed payments. Forcing webpages to be TLS equipped, helps to ensure a more safe and secure experience for users of Google.
All search engines expect your webpage to be designed for mobile devices. This is not unusual as most internet users will visit a webpage from their mobile device, and not from a laptop or desktop. Prior to smartphones, webpages were designed for laptop and desktop screens. They were usually a fixed width and relied heavily on graphics and sometimes Flash. Once smartphones became the dominant choice of web surfers, webpages have evolved into a responsive or fluid design. Said otherwise, the webpages are flexible and adapt to the device of the user.
Lastly, search engines can only read and index a webpage if it’s able to properly read and decipher the intent of the webpage. It’s important that the webpage load quickly, is coded without excessive code/data so that it’s easy to read the code, and that the website is free of bloat, plagiarism, and manipulative tactics (black-hat SEO). Therefore, it is extremely critical to hire a professional search engine optimization company like Metovation. A good SEO company will also provide web development. Good SEO begins with a good plan and website design. It can sometimes be more difficult to fix a poorly developed website, than to build a fresh website from scratch. Continue reading to learn more about characteristics and services offered by an SEO company like Metovation.
In sum, SEO is about creating quality content that is decipherable to a search engine. In addition to webpages, search engines also rank social media profiles, map listings, images, and videos. All the above are important to rank your brand at the top of SERPs.
What does Google think of SEO?
Metovation is a full-service SEO company. We can run detailed audits of your existing website or help you build a brand-new website from scratch. Providing expert website design and SEO provides us with the advantage of ranking webpages higher on SERPs. When looking for an SEO company, ensure they aren’t just a digital marketing firm that also performs SEO. To be successful with SEO, you need a company that can fully design and code websites from scratch. If a digital marketing firm is only using platforms like WordPress to build websites, it’s likely they are not equipped to code the complex schema and syntax which is necessary to rank your brand at the top of SERPs.
Not sure about Metovation? We have a 5 star rating on Google! Check out these reviews.
"Metovation did an amazing job on our site and we know from past experience with Jonathan's work that our site will soon be top of the scroll on every search."
"Excellent communications. Informative and proactive. I would highly recommend."
