What is SEO?

SEO is an acronym that comes from the English "Search Engine Optimization" and its translation can be "Search engine optimization", as the name itself says, everything that concerns optimization actions for a website to appear more and better on Google (thinking about Brazil, where more than 95% of all users use the search giant) is SEO.

We can say that a website that appears in the top positions of Google and is interesting enough to make visitors visit it is an SEO-optimized website. Just as we can also say that a website that does not appear, even if you search for words that are in its content or relate to it, is not optimized for searches and consequently has no chance of receiving these hits.

We can say that SEO work mainly involves two subjects about the website: content and the part technique. The content is the message and involves the texts, images, photos and videos used. The technical part involves the code, navigability and structure of the website.

Why is SEO important for your website?

SEO is important because increases the number of website visits. Let's assume that you have a company that sells cleaning products throughout Brazil. According to Google Trends, there are certainly a minimum of 100.000 searches for "cleaning products", but this number could reach 1 million. The importance of SEO is in taking people who do this search to your website, once on the website they can get in touch, make quotes, buy, among other actions that boil down to having more sales and customers.

Most of the time, Google is the main agent in making a website viable, as it will make people who do not yet know the website start to get to know it when searching for its content. So, a website for companies, e.g. without SEO it is normally an unviable product.

How does Google rank websites?

O Google always tries to list the best sites (with the best answers for your visitors) in best positions. This classification process generates what we call ranking and for this Google analyzes several different factors. 

Google actually uses many factors to determine the ranking of websites, however, we can simplify it into some points that are known to everyone, as below:

📱 Website quality on cell phones: Google today deeply analyzes how the website looks on cell phones, yes, unlike what we think, the version prioritized for Google is the one that appears on cell phones and the first item is: Does the site load quickly? - In the mobile scenario, people usually use slower connections like 3G, so the website needs to load quickly in these conditions.

✍🏼 Quality, originality and exclusivity of content: Your website content needs to add value to your visitors in a unique way. Think that Google knows, in addition to your website, all your competitors, so plagiarized content or content that has no originality has no space. This applies to texts, images, photos and videos. 

🔗 Who has links to your website: This is one of the first ranking factors ever created and is still important today. A website with good content has other websites linking to it. This is called a backlink. Normally, larger websites increase the credibility of smaller ones by creating links to them and this can happen in different scenarios, for example, social networks are sites with a lot of authority and having your website links there adds value. 

Want to see a little more about website ranking? Follow this series of videos on official Google Search Console channel to learn a little more about. See below one of the videos from the series "How Search Works" (subtitles in Portuguese are possible).

Optimization, why is this word used a lot in SEO?

The word optimization is used a lot in SEO and this has an explanation. The work that is carried out in terms of SEO is not a recipe or exact. There is no absolute truth about this, only recommendations to be used and tested in order to optimize (and not correct) the content.

All actions taken in terms of SEO need to be tested according to what we call KPIs (key performance indicator, translated into performance indicators) to understand whether the actions changed the site positively or negatively. For example, we can use the metric "number of pages viewed by a user" to measure the performance of an action to change navigation links on a website, where if the user sees more pages, we can consider this action as positive.

It is very common for this work to be done by a company specializes in SEO  with experience in different scenarios to indicate which actions are recommended for your website. Furthermore, the SEO scenario is constantly evolving, so some actions that used to work well may no longer work after a few Google updates, which is why it is extremely important to always be up to date with news in the segment. Want to see for example how to appear on Google in 2024, see this article updated information about our company.

See 10 essential items to know how to rank on Google

We have separated 10 items that are fundamental among actions on the website, in addition to the website and monitoring tools, see below:

1) Keywords: Keywords are the words that people type in the search field. They can be short terms, such as "buy shoes" or long terms such as "buy women's leather shoes directly from the factory". We call sentences with more words long tail terms and they are easier to rank, in principle.

2) Titles: It is important to know that a page can have many titles and they are all important. For example: The page title (tag in the code) is seen in the browser and is very important for SEO, while the social title is used when the article is shared on social networks (tag og:title in the code) and the H1 is the title of an article with a journalistic nature for Google News. It is important to have this notion to understand the complexity of the work. 

3) Content: Content is the heart of the website. The visitor accesses the website to consume the content, the rest is just support for him. Therefore, the content deserves all the dedication to be original, exclusive, high quality and authentic. There is no precise metric for the size of website content, so think that it needs to be enough to be good.

4) Images and photos: Images and photos are part of the content, however, they are separated because they deserve special attention. As we said above, the website needs to load quickly on cell phones and 3G connections, so the images need to be light for cell phones, but with good quality, as well as larger and with better resolution for computers. It is also important that images and photos are used that are contextual to the subject of the page, with good captions and, preferably, exclusive. 

5) Links and navigation: Clear and objective navigation is essential for the user experience and also for Google to understand your content. Use friendly urls, where the friendly URL is easy for readers, for example: "mysite.com/compre-agora" is easier to read than "mysite.com/123-compra?q=now&ok". It is common to call the website structure a sitemap or sitemap and it is very important that it is thought of coherently before starting to add content.

6) Backlinks: Backlinks are links to your website. Mainly links from larger sites. Use community websites, social networks, content sharing, among others to create coherent links to your website. In addition to interesting backlinks, they can be an interesting source of traffic.

7) Social media: It is essential to have a presence on social media. Just like backlinks, social media can generate engagement and complement your content on and off your website. For example, adding Facebook comments to your page can complement your content, just as engaging content on Facebook generates multiple visits to your website. Both add value.

8) Using Google Search Console: Google Search Console is Google's official tool for understanding how your website is performing in searches. Its use covers keywords, Google page position, technical issues and much more. It is very important to know the tool and know about its existence for success in SEO and to rank the website.

9) Use of Google Analytics: Another official Google tool, this one offers detailed data on access and user behavior in general. The use of Google Analytics or GA4 (the current version is 4) is essential for measuring the effectiveness of actions and raising KPIs, as we mentioned previously. It is necessary to closely monitor the data to study what is happening after each action.

10) Have or hire a professional team: The role of the SEO professional is fundamental to help improve the website's ranking and depending on the size of the project, it is important to have a team dedicated to the subject or hire specialized companies to carry out consultancy and auditing to convey your impression and try to add value. The amount of visits a website receives can change a company, so insights and observations can be very valuable. It's important to keep in mind that professional audit work may be necessary to unlock a project's potential. Eco Webdesign is one of these companies, if you want to know more.

Conclusion

Now that you've arrived here about SEO for websites and how to rank on Google, I think it's important to conclude by highlighting that content is the heart of the website. Quality content that adds to the user has a lot of value, so deliver your content on a well-made and fast website. This could be the ideal summary of everything we talked about. Good ranking and count on us if you need help.