Have you ever wondered why some blogs appear on the first page of a search engine result while others do not? The answer lies in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Google and other search engines usually rank blogs based on the relevance of their content, popularity and the accessibility of the website. SEO is a process used to optimize a website's ranking on Google and other search engines.

Good SEO practices would help your blog appear on the first page of search engine results, thereby increasing the popularity of your brand. There are four basic components of SEO, namely technical SEO, on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and content.

• Technical SEO - This entails website and server optimizations that enable search engines to effectively discover, index and rank your page. Your site should pass the webmaster guideline to be discovered, indexed and ranked high by Google. The basic principle of the webmaster guideline is that your site should be easily accessible, user-friendly and contain accurate content. Find out more about Google's webmaster guidelines for technical SEO - at https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials . Ensure that no broken links or pages are on your website, this is to enable Google to index your site and rank it high. Speak with your software developers to optimize your site for mobile devices and increase the speed/web load time for your site, this is because your site may rank low if you do not optimize all these features. Optimizing all these technical features would help your guests to have a pleasant experience using your site and this would encourage them to return.

• On-page SEO - On-page SEO is concerned with creating content that will drive traffic to your website. This includes selecting the appropriate keywords, title tag, and meta description. To select the best keywords, you must conduct keyword research. SEMrush and Google Keyword Planner are excellent tools for keyword research. The title tag is the title of your webpage; it should be relevant to your content, brief, and descriptive. Meta descriptions are summaries of your website's content that appear on search engine results pages. Meta descriptions should be brief, usually no more than 160 characters, and relevant to the content. Here is a guideline for writing good meta descriptions - https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.searchenginewatch.com/2016/05/16/how-to-write-meta-title-tags-for-seo-with-good-and-bad-examples/

• Off-page SEO - Off-page SEO refers to all the activities done outside your site to increase your search engine ranking. This deals with backlinking. A backlink is when one website posts a link to another website using anchor text. No page on your site should stand alone, they should contain links to similar pages and your homepage for an excellent user experience. You can also request that other sites post links to your page, this tells Google that the information on your page is valuable and referenced by other sources. The easiest way to get other sites to reference you is by doing the same for them. However, do not post irrelevant links as this could reduce your SEO ranking.

• Content - Content deals with the information on your site and the way it is presented. Your content should be engaging and informative. Most internet readers have a short attention span, so your content should not be lengthy and it should be interesting to your audience. You need to identify what your reader wants and present the answer quickly. Recruit good content writers to help you write engaging articles.

These 4 main components are interdependent, and all contribute to a good search engine ranking. Remember, to keep your spot on the first page you must continue to adhere to good SEO practices.

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