Search-engine-optimization (SEO) is a term that can be defined as a combination of multiple factors that determine how well or how worse a website ranks in a search engines search query rankings. SEO done right can increase your websites rankings, which in return will increase your website traffic which leads to higher sales and better ROI.

Once you have understood what SEO is, now it is time to tell you some general steps towards a good implementation of it. Keep in mind the results are not instant, they can take anywhere from a week to a couple of months to show up depending on the crawlability of your website/blog/ whatever web address you are reachable on and performing SEO on. 

Every blogger or SEO specialist have a different perspective on which techniques work the best to achieve the best results possible, but in this article I will tell you the steps that have successfully worked for me for multiple websites, so the strategy I am about to share with you has worked wonders for me many a times.

Let’s discuss which factors are search ranking dependent upon:
  1.  Quality and uniqueness of the content
  2.  Visitors interaction with the content
  3.  Quality backlinks pointing towards your website
  4.  social media popularity and viral-ness
  5.  Website Performance, and responsiveness


Quality and uniqueness of content

Google is the highest rated and most intelligent search engine out there and it crawls millions of websites and it ranks them accordingly using the factors mentioned above.
Before understanding this factor you should ask yourself would you rather read something innovative or just read articles/ information that is widely available and has no more worth anymore? If your answer is read innovative and new content then you have understood why this factor is THE MOST important.

There is a golden saying in the SEO world, Write Less, but Write Good.

Whenever you are writing an article/blog update, don’t do it just for the sake of activity or just putting some content out there. There is already enough garbage on the internet, and its better if you leave yours out. Write in-depth and well researched information regarding any topic of your choice, but also keep in mind don’t try to be google or amazon (you can’t satisfy every niche). Try to stay in your niche.

Let me share a small personal story that made my cooking blog get a PageRank 2 in barely a month of it being out there. I had a recipe that was non-existent on the internet, by that I mean when I searched it on google the first search result on the first page was mine, and all the other results were basically irrelevant, and I believe that post alone helped me get that page-rank. So, uniqueness does matter, and it will take your website to new heights and readers will look for your content because you are not just some guy whose copy pasting other people’s content and trying to make a following.

Visitor’s interaction with your content

This factor is supercritical and might even be a little hard to grasp since its not mentioned by much SEO’s experts around. How intrigued and grasped your reader is will determine your rankings. By interaction I mean commenting on your article, liking it and sharing it and maybe even using it in their online existence, and probably giving you credit for it. I have noticed many blog’s where the content was not as rich, but the interactions were so many (for example 100+ comments), now that is enough indication that the article has something in it talk-worthy. Moreover, it will also help you build a very targeted email list, which will help you generate a different stream of money.

Quality Backlinks

Backlink is a very well-known word now, but I will still explain it for total newbies. Backlinks are let’s say trust points for your website from other already established and well-respected domains. They can also be called as referral links to your content, and these links are telling search engines to give you more respect and rank you higher since a lot of old domains have voted for you.
There are numerous ways to attain backlinks, but some backlinks are worth more than others depending upon where they are coming from.
For example if you are referred to do business with by Bill Gates(founder of Microsoft) isn’t that more credible compared with the referral coming from somebody who isn’t know that much and his words cant be taken seriously. So, domain age and authority and credibility does matter.

There are two ways to get backlinks:

1.       Natural self-created and earned backlinks
2.       Buy backlinks

Buying backlinks is the easiest thing a person can do, and it can dramatically affect a website’s search rankings. To give you an idea of how important they are. A couple years back I was following this blogger and he shared that after he had gotten 4 contextual backlinks from PR 4 websites his page rank also rose to 4. So, they were immensely powerful. But a word of advice, don’t buy backlinks in bulk because that looks unnatural and google hates any activity of the ordinary so you might be penalized for that. Buy them in small quantities while working on the natural one’s yourself.

Social media Marketing (SEM)

It’s the age of social media so its obvious that you need to be merged in it in order to reap its benefits and exploit it to get as much traffic to your website/article/affiliate link as possible. SEM serves two purposes:
1.       Gives you a massive traffic boost that could be turned into a sustainable traffic source if managed correctly.
2.       Social media mentions and shares also gives your content a higher click through rate which causes its popularity to rise, and hence its ranked higher by the search engines.
Social media sharing also gives you targeted visitors towards specific articles/section in your website which can provide you a better opportunity to cater those visitors and turn them into potential customers.

Loading time & Responsiveness

It doesn’t sound like a big deal if you think a website took a few extra seconds to load but believe me it does, and it can cause bigger companies to lose millions. 
Source: developers.google.com

This image above shows exactly how important performance is, and how it can cause the visitor to just bounce off before the site even finishes loading up. If a website has a poor loading and navigating time search engines rank them lower since they give poor user experience.