SEO – what is it and what does it consist of?

SEO stands for search engine optimization and basically means optimization for a search engine. For someone who has had no previous exposure to SEO, the development of this acronym may seem enigmatic and unclear. 

So what is SEO actually?

SEO is a series of activities related to a website, the goal of which is for it to achieve high positions in organic search results, for as many pre-selected keywords as possible. 

What activities comprise SEO?

Basically, we distinguish between two types of activities – on-site and off-site. The former involve activities directly on the website itself, while the latter involve influencing its online environment. In order to achieve satisfactory results, the positioning strategy must equally cover both aspects.

What on-site activities consist of?

On-site actions are primarily the adaptation of a website to the Google Guidelines for Webmasters, which are a comprehensive document of several hundred pages describing how a website should work to be displayed high in search results.

First and foremost, an on-site SEO audit of the site is conducted to thoroughly analyze the site and catch any possible errors and deviations from the Webmasters Guidelines. This is followed by fixing the errors from the programming side. 

Because for some time now Google has also been paying attention to how easy it is for the user to navigate our site and whether the data architecture we present makes sense, it is also worth conducting a UX audit with a person who specializes in this topic. 

The next stage of on-site activities is the analysis and development of content on the site. Today, valuable content is one of the most important ranking factors. We verify what amount of content we realistically have, whether it covers all the topics related to our business, whether our content contains all the interesting keywords and whether it is published regularly.

Following this, we make a selection of keywords and prepare a content plan that will allow us to develop this content on the site on an ongoing basis and in accordance with the strategy we have adopted. 

What are off-site activities?

Off-site activities primarily include conducting link building for our website. Link building is the acquisition of links from sites thematically related to ours. The purpose of link building is to transfer some of the power of the sites directing to us, which affects the positions in the organic search results.

Usually, link building is not just about acquiring a link. For it to be valuable, links should be placed in related articles with keywords of interest. 

The quality of the publication sites is also important – whether they are real “live” sites or only artificially created for the purpose of posting links on them, constituting so-called spam and having rather low SEO parameters.

Off-site activities also include examining the originality of content on the site. We check whether the descriptions of products and services and any blog posts are original and do not have duplicates occurring somewhere on the web. 

Who can do SEO activities?

In theory, SEO activities can be carried out by anyone who has studied the subject enough to be able to follow the Webmaster Guidelines, create content and acquire valuable links. In practice, however, one must remember that SEO is a long-term and time-consuming process. It also requires a lot of technical knowledge. Very often, the time spent on exploring the subject and implementing the activities personally can prove “more expensive” than taking the help of a specialist who has been exploring the subject for years.