Four Types of SEO Everyone Should Understand

Even if you don’t desire to be an SEO expert, you still need to have a basic understanding of these four types to help you understand your website.

Photo by Carlos Muza on Unsplash

Not too long ago, I saw someone posting in a Facebook Group asking why their new company didn’t rank on page 1 of Google. They launched the site just a few days before. I smiled a little bit, remembering the confusion I faced when I first started learning about SEO.

Even if you don’t desire to be an SEO expert, you still need to have a basic understanding of it for your website. You want to be able to ask marketing companies and SEO agencies relevant questions when meeting with them.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Basically, Google, Bing, and other search engines use mechanisms to rank websites when users search for information. You want your website to be optimized, so you come up first when someone searches for you, the services you offer, or something related to your brand.

If someone searches for “life coach in Philadelphia”, you don’t want your website hanging out all lonely on page 8 of the search results. You want to be on page #1.

SEO can be expensive, and sadly, I’ve seen a lot of companies taken advantage of simply because they didn’t know enough about it before signing a contract. I’ve made mistakes myself, mainly because I lacked understanding and failed to hold companies accountable.

There are four types of SEO that I’m going to cover briefly that you need to know about when looking for an SEO agency.

Technical SEO: Includes the layout and organization of your website, page speed, and adaptability for mobile performance.

Off-site SEO: analyzes links from other websites to your website (improving ranking authority). Know your target audience. What kind of links do you want? Distribution strategy is important.

On-site SEO: images, metatags, keyword strategy. Include search terms in page titles.

Content: Creating clean and effective content is so key. It has to be relevant to what the person is searching for.

When speaking to an agency, you want to get a list of what they are going to do to address each of these factors to help you rank well. You also want to get a report each month of tasks that were completed and where you currently rank for certain keywords and searches. Understand that SEO takes time. Be patient, but also expect to see progress.

At least now, you have a basic understanding of the factors at play in your website ranking. This makes it much easier to have a conversation with a company that promises big results.