SEO and its importance for the success of your brand or company

Setting up a website can be easy for many, but positioning its something else. The positioning of your website is extremely important because it will determine whether you will be successful or not.

The objective of a website, is that users and potential clients can reach it. On the web, the main way to find a website is through a search engine. These collect information among the millions of sites on the web. Then, they show it to users in order of relevance according to their search intent.

To get your site to rank among the first results, it is necessary to apply SEO.

What is SEO?

If you wonder what SEO is, this refers to Search Engine Optimization. Its function is to optimize your website in such a way that it can appear among the first search results.

When a person conducts a search on Google or any other search engine, they usually pick the sites from the top results. A very small percentage of people go to the second page of results and... and let's not talk about the next ones. That is why, it's extremely necessary that your site appear in the first results.

In this way, you will be able to obtain as many organic visits as possible. The higher you are in the SERPs, the more relevant you will be, which also translates into a significant increase in traffic.

However, it is important to mention that SEO is not an easy thing to do. Especially if you do not have the necessary knowledge, it is best to choose a specialized agency.

SEO benefits

SEO has a series of important benefits, among which are the following:

Long-term positioning : One of the main advantages over other forms of positioning is that it is long-term. While in strategies like SEM, you get instant positioning (as long as you pay), with SEO this positioning is slow, but durable.

Increase in traffic : With SEO, you will be able to obtain a greater amount of traffic to your website. This can translate to a greater number of potential clients arriving and getting to know your site. Which can significantly increase your income.

Boost your brand : Once you have managed to position your site in the SERPs, your brand will gain notoriety. Which is extremely important so that you can improve your conversions and increase your sales. And of course, this is a key factor when it comes to SEO.

A higher return on investment : A SEO strategy is not exactly cheap, but if it is done well it will be totally worth it. An SEO strategy will allow you to obtain the highest possible return on your investment. This performance is higher than what you can get with strategies like SEM.

The types of SEO

Depending on what you do with your sites and the SEO positioning strategies you use, this can be classified into three types.

SEO White Hat

SEO is considered "white hat" when you follow all the guidelines established by search engines to the letter. Ideally, all SEO strategies are white hat, to ensure that the positioning is organic and "fair".

However, there are very few sites on the web that follow all the guidelines rigorously and without getting out of the way. And it is that the white hat can take much longer to give results, but the advantage is that you will be able to sleep peacefully at night, because you know that you will not be penalized.

SEO Black Hat

The "black hat" is the opposite of the white hat, in this type of SEO, practices are used that are not well seen by search engines, but that will improve your positioning more quickly.

This type of SEO has its disadvantage and that is that if you are discovered, the search engines will penalize your site. And this can be catastrophic for your project. Today, most sites on the net have used the black hat at least once.

SEO Gray Hat

The SEO "gray hat" is an intermediate point between both and this is one of the most used today. And it is basically when a person implements a white hat strategy, but also makes use of some black hat techniques.

A good part of the internet sites resort to buying links, which is a black hat practice. However, everything else is done according to search engine policies.

What is on-page SEO and off-page SEO?

SEO is not a single practice, but encompasses many others and each of these parts plays a fundamental role in the organic positioning of your website. Next, we will briefly describe what are those practices that are part of SEO.

SEO on-page

SEO "on-page" is a type of SEO which is responsible for carrying out different strategies within the website itself. In this case, the site owner has full control over this. This is vital for the positioning of the web in the search engines. That is why, you must pay close attention and care to each of its aspects.

On -page SEO is made up of the following attributes:

• Content : Content is a fundamental part of every website and search engines take this very seriously. It is vital that the content you offer on your website is of quality and original. As long as you respond to the visitor's search intent, search engines will give you greater prominence.

• Loading speed: loading speed is another of the most important things on a website. If your site loads slowly, visitors are likely to leave your website and this is something that negatively affects your bounce rate.

• Internal linking: Internal linking is another of the things that are very important on your website. Believe it or not, this plays a key role on your site as you link from one content page to another. This makes the visitor and the search engine spiders stay longer on your site.

• Keywords : The keywords on your website are probably one of the most important things to keep in mind. This makes your site much easier to get to, as this is directly related to the visitor's search intent.

• URLs : URLs are another of the things that most influence SEO, they must be user-friendly. In such a way that they are easy to understand by both the visitor and the search engines.

• Titles and meta descriptions : When someone performs a search, the title and meta description will appear in the results. That is why you should always pay special attention to them. These should not only contain the keyword, but must be persuasive to incentivize the person to click.

These are just some of the attributes that are part of on-page SEO, there are a few more that you can investigate for yourself.

SEO off-page

Off-page SEO is the opposite of the previous case and although it is extremely important, here we are not in control of what happens. And it is that it is all the practices or attributes that come from outside to your website, since they depend on a third party.

In this case, the most common practice is link building or external linking. This is simply all the inbound links that come from other websites to your website. They are extremely important for positioning, since they transmit a part of the authority of that site to yours.

Ideally, these links are given in an organic way, that is, another site links to yours because they like your content. However, this has become a very profitable business, which is why it is usually necessary to buy links and mentions to improve our positioning.

This is all part of some basic SEO knowledge that every site builder should know. Of course, the topic of SEO and web positioning is too broad, and it is difficult to cover it in a single article. That is why, if you want to know more about this topic, you can do a little more research on the web.

You can even find basic and even advanced SEO guides on YouTube that can be very helpful. SEO positioning requires a lot of practice for a site to appear in the first search results.