You may have heard a lot of times about SEO and you have figured out it is something online related but did you know that it is actually a very important ticket every modern business should earn to keep an edge in the digital market?
SEO, or also known as Search Engine Optimization, is basically a set of interrelated practices or principles which aim at enhancing both the quantity and the quality of traffic in a website. The domino effect of this traffic benefits the business’s brand in terms of exposure to a wider digital market via non-paid or organic search engine results.
Although the acronym meaning is kind of sophisticated to the ear, New York SEO, they say, is actually a lot about people because it is about search engines themselves, i.e. they interpret whatever internet users search in the search engines. Its goal is to comprehend what people look for on the web, e.g. the answers they try to seek, the words they use, and the content type they wish to spend their web time on. The answers to these queries will enable every business to connect to the people they wish to sell their products or solutions to.
The Intention of New York SEO
Basically, the purpose of New York SEO is to know or decipher the intention of the audience, e.g. product or service they want, and being included in the search engine results’ list of business that are capable to deliver that intention.
Search engines like Google Chrome, Mozilla, and Yahoo act as answer machines. They fetch billions of pieces of content being submitted on the web and identify which content has the best answer to users’ queries after taking into consideration thousands of valid technical factors. They do it by fetching and cataloguing all obtainable content on the web in various forms: web pages, images, PDFs, power point presentations, videos, and a lot more, via a process called crawling and indexing. After this process, the fetched contents shall be reordered depending on how well they match the users’ questions in a process called ranking.
New York SEO: What are organic search results?
As mentioned earlier, organic search results are the ones that are obtained after carrying out effective search engine optimization; those that are not paid for via advertising. Back in the early days of online marketing, organic searches were easily done and there’re was clear labelling of the ads. However, since then, a lot of things have changed; spotting organic results these days is no longer as easy. Result pages of search engines, or also known as SERPS, are now stuffed with both SERP features or more dynamic organic results formats and more advertising. Famous SERP features include featured snippets or answer boxes, image carousels, and a lot other gimmicks all to provide what the audience is seeking. For instance, if a person searches for the weather in his area, e.g. “New York weather”, that person will get to see a forecast of the weather for New York directly in the SERP on top of being displayed a list of links to sites that contain that data about the forecast. And if, for instance, the user searches for “New York pizza”, then the search engine shall display a local pack result which is made up of pizza paces in New York. That is how convenient search engines work nowadays.
However, it is necessary to bear in mind that search engines majorly earn from advertising. Unsurprisingly, their goal is to provide solution to every searcher’s queries (within SERPS), to keep them searching back, and to keep them longer on the SERPs. There are some features of SERP on Google that are organic, and thus can be easily swayed by SEO. These features include related questions (or the People Also Ask box section) and featured snippets (or that section that shows an answer inside a box).
It is vital to note that there are a lot other search features that cannot be influenced by search engine optimization typically although they are not paid advertising. These features more often than not have data obtained from proprietary data sources like IMDB, WebMD, and Wikipedia.
Why is New York SEO necessary?
Social media, paid advertising, and other online platforms can facilitate traffic to websites but although that is the case, the huge chunk of online traffic is caused by search engines. Technically, this is why New York SEO is necessary.
Organic searches are believed to be more credible especially to tech-savvy searchers and they cover a lot of digital real estate. That means these search results also receive more clicks when compared to paid advertisements. For instance, of all searches in United States, only almost 3% of people showed interest in paid advertisements in the form of clicks.
Search Engine Optimization is also a special online marketing platform that has the ability to generate dividends through time provided it is set up correctly and strategically and this makes use of a solid piece of content with the right keywords that can potentially rank high. Once this is achieved, traffic can spike.
They say search engines are now smarter than ever. Well, although that is the case, these search engines still are not perfect; they still need help and can still be manipulated. However, in order to outsmart Google and all those other search engines, site optimization is important as it will help provide better information to search engines. Site optimization includes indexing content properly and appropriately and ensuring they get displayed on search results.
Hiring a New York SEO Agency or Consultant
DIY SEO is possible but the extent or likelihood of its success ultimately depends on your willingness to learn, your bandwidth, and the complexity of your website. But as such a task is not always as easy as it seems, sometimes, preferring the help of an expert is a better path to take.
Hiring an expert in the field may be easy with the many options of consultants and agencies that can provide SEO services for your business but the truth is all of their services can vary extensively in terms of quality. Hence, it is best to know how to distinguish a good New York SEO company from bad as it will help you save a lot of money and time in the long run. Choosing the wrong one may only mean your website will be run under wrong SEO techniques which can do more harm than good.
Black Hat SEO or White Hat SEO
Black Hat SEO means that the strategies and techniques used intend to fool or spam search engines. Meanwhile, White Hat SEO uses the best SEO practices, techniques, and strategies that conform to the search engine rules and regulations and is driven by its primary aim to provide more content value to search engine users.
Black Hat SEO may work but the risks it can expose the website at is totally not worth it especially with all the penalties or consequences, e.g. deindexing and being removed from search results. Moreover, black hat SEO also has ethical implications that may burden the website financially in the long run.
In hiring a New York SEO company, be always careful. Do not let your hard work be put to waste all because the SEO agency you have trusted opted to work under the table.
Search Engines Have Common Goals with the SEO Industry
The industry of Engine Optimization and all the major search engines of today actually have the same set of goals that is to help every business succeed whilst giving the best answers to the queries of search engine users. As a matter of fact, the leading search engine, Google, even issued an SEO Starter Guide -a manual to help businesses have a guided set of SEO efforts.
There is this forum called Webmaster Central Help Forum where Google and SEO and webmasters meet and discuss the process for hours. Other search engines also have their corresponding venues. But at the end of the day, the webmaster guidelines of search engines still differ from each other albeit their underlying principles being the same.
Search engine developers do not advise webmasters and SEO strategists to trick search engines; it is never a beneficial move. Rather, websites are advised to prioritize creating great content and user experience while taking into account the search engine guidelines.
For Google, below are some of the major principles to remember:
* Deceiving users is a big no.
* Pages have to be made primarily for users and not for search engines.
* Tricks aiming to enhance search engine rankings are discouraged.
* Only implement what is helpful to users.
* Avoid using automatic generation of contents, engaging in link schemes, copying contents, cloaking, using hidden links and texts, and using doorway pages.
Meanwhile, Bing is strict and clear of the following rules:
* Content in a website must be clear, engaging, deep, and easy to find.
* Page titles must be clear and relevant to the content and nature of website.
* Social shares and influence are acknowledged as positive signals, thereby enhancing the website’s rank.
* Page speed must be optimized.
* Great user experience must be kept.
* Alt attributes must be used in describing images.
