{"id":14795,"date":"2016-05-27T11:12:27","date_gmt":"2016-05-27T09:12:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hetzner.co.za\/help-centre\/?p=14795"},"modified":"2022-11-10T11:52:26","modified_gmt":"2022-11-10T09:52:26","slug":"what-is-seo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xneelo.co.za\/help-centre\/website\/what-is-seo\/","title":{"rendered":"Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The majority of online experiences start with a Search Engine, e.g. Google, Bing, and Yahoo. SEO is about optimising your website for search engines<\/strong>\u00a0so that your website can be found using their search function.<\/span><\/p>\n

Having a website is the first step, but how do customers find you online?<\/h3>\n

If your main source of traffic is from search engines<\/strong> e.g. people searching for your product on Google, then you will need to make SEO a priority<\/strong>. Consider referring to a web designer who is experienced in SEO or make use of SEO specialist services.<\/p>\n

However, if your main traffic comes from referrals<\/strong> i.e. people know your domain name and browse directly to your site, then SEO won’t need to be as much of a focus, though still important.<\/p>\n

Search engines perform the following activities in order to deliver results: <\/span><\/h3>\n

Crawling<\/h4>\n

Crawlers are programs that visit your website, read your pages and other information and create entries into the search indexing system. <\/span><\/p>\n

Indexing<\/h4>\n

After they have “fetched\u201d all your website pages they start indexing them into a giant database from which they can later be retrieved. Essentially, they are identifying the words and phrases that best describe your pages and assign them particular keywords. <\/span><\/p>\n

Processing<\/h4>\n

When a search request comes, the search engine compares the search string in the search, e.g. \u201cWeb hosting companies in South Africa\u201d, with your indexed pages. <\/span><\/p>\n

Retrieving results<\/h4>\n

The search engine then retrieves the best-matched results, displaying them in the browser.<\/span><\/p>\n

To increase the likelihood of your website being found and ranked well by the search engines, you will need to consider factors like:<\/p>\n