“The best place to hide a dead body is the second page of Google search.”
Anonymous
For businesses, their website is often the first point of contact between the brand and the customer. Most people discover businesses via search engines in today’s connected world.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all about making sure that your website gets a prominent placement in the search engine result page (SERP).
How important SEO is? You can imagine when you search for a topic on Google, you would probably focus more on the first or second page of the results. That’s how important SEO is for marketers, if your website is located on the third or fourth page of search result, nobody would visit your page!
Let’s find out more about SEO!
What is SEO?
SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.
Soooo… What goes into SEO?
- Quality of traffic. You can attract all the visitors in the world, but if they’re coming to your site because Google tells them you’re a resource for Apple computers when really you’re a farmer selling apples, that is not quality traffic. Instead you want to attract visitors who are genuinely interested in products that you offer.
- Quantity of traffic. Once you have the right people clicking through from those search engine results pages (SERPs), more traffic is better.
- Organic results. Ads make up a significant portion of many SERPs. Organic traffic is any traffic that you don’t have to pay for.
So, Is SEO a Science or An Art?
Why SEO is Science?
- Research is required – SEO needs research within:
- Google’s algorithm (to understand the facts of how it works)
- Your website’s audience (to understand what kind of content they want)
- Keywords (to understand what those people are searching for)
2. Numbers drive critical functions – the numbers provide guidelines in some critical parts to SEO like:
- 50 to 60 (optimal character length of Meta Title)
- 150 to 160 (optimal character length of Meta Description)
- 100 (having keyword in the first hundred words of a page’s content is relevancy factor)
- 115 or under (optimal URL length)
- 4 or under (the number of seconds your website should load)
- Backlinking URLs, Social Shares
3. Formulas are the brain of search engines – Google algorithm that changes hundred of times per year
4. Observation is ongoing
Why SEO is an Art?
1. Compelling, Concise and Clickable Copy
The metadata that shows in the results page has a restriction on the number of characters.
So, do you jam in as many keywords as possible? Or, do you write convincing copy that’ll get clicks? If you approach your SEO artfully, you’ll do the latter.
2. Clear, Smart Keyword Hierarchy & Structure
Pop quiz! What option will drive better SEO results?
- A: Throw every keyword applicable to your business on every page of your site?
- B: Design an architecture that places keywords on individual pages?
Correct answer = B!
Mapping out how you place keywords throughout a website is not a one-size-fits-all formula nor do you just “plug ‘em” into your content. It takes careful planning and ingenuity.
3. Not falling victim to generically naming links “Click Here”
Naming your links “click here” negatively impacts SEO (and is also bad for UX). It lacks the artful approach that search engine bots are seeking to understand how content and pages connect.
Here’s a common, but poorly designed link:
- I wrote a blog about common SEO mistakes. Click here to read.
Now, here’s one with some intentionality (remember, this is better for people and robots):
- I wrote a blog about common SEO mistakes.
In a single sentence on a single page, no, this isn’t a huge deal. But, compounded over many pages on a website — it becomes a huge deal. Ensuring a website’s internal linking structure is consistently simple and concise is a sign of crafty design.
In conclusion, SEO is both science and an art. Only using a scientific approach will keep you in the race but will never push you ahead. Only using a creative approach may have disastrous results and really isn’t sustainable. Thus, mastering both strategy would be beneficial for the company.
What do you think? Is SEO a science or an art? Or maybe both? Tell me more on you opinion down below!
Nina's Digital Marketing Blog 
A wholesome well-written blog! I do agree with what you said about SEO being both science and art, it would help searches on Google much more reliable and easy to read for everybody.
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Hello! Thank you for reading my blog! Yes, correct! It can be both science and art! Improving SEO does help companies on being noticeable on google searches.
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Most of the SEO requires doing lots of calculations. We are relying on the database and calculations provided by SEMrush, Ahref, Google Analytics as they all the calculations for you which usually make us guessing are we doing the backlinks right or not. SEO is becoming science to me I think
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Thanks Weeling for commenting! Woah, that’s very informative! It is true that all the calculations and analysis do make SEO a science. However, I will have to disagree on the statement that SEO is only a Science.
I think that SEO is the combination of both Science and Art. It is a science because it requires research, numbers, formulas and also observation. It is an art because it takes proper designing and usage of proper text to ensure more clicks. Moreover, I understands why most people think it is Science, because it takes more science part.
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Great post! I feel that SEO is important because when we need to find information online, we use search engines. I think SEO is a easy and cost-effective way for business to draw more customers while also generating more sales.
I used to think that SEO is more of an art, because statistical models don’t set business goals, tell compelling stories or know why your audience is buying your product. But after reading your post, I decided it was a mixture of the two.
SEO is a “science” because there are established user activity figures such as most people finding websites through search engines, and most users clicking on the results of organic searches. However, there is still a lot of art involved in SEO too. The way people behave on search engines, for example, is subjective and has to do with human psychology. SEOs also ought to be mindful of the psychological complexities of human behavior.
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Hi Gxinrui! I do agree that SEO is important and the most effective and affordable way to gain clicks and gain more sales.
On the contrary, I used to think that SEO is more of a science, because it involves number, algorithm, and formulas.
Now, we have the same idea that SEO is a mixture of both Art and Science, Yay! No matter which one it is I think the most important thing is to make sure that your website gets a prominent placement in the search engine result page (SERP) right? So by combining both of these approach, I’m sure that the company’s website will receive tremendous amount of visits.
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With google being something everyone looks to today, i think every organization should be ultilizing search engine optimizers, in order to not only promote themselves, but to also be able to target users more specifically. Many organizations are still not tapping on search engine optimizers as of yet. I think whoever that starts to gain a first mover advantage will stand to increase their profitability and improve their branding by quite a bit
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Hi Khng022, Thank you for commenting on my post! I do agree that organizations should configure and utilize well their SEO in order to promote and get more sales.
Actually I have seen quite a few brands who use SEO to be on top of the search results, but I think most of the brands choose to use PPC in order to be on top of the search list because it is easier and if their budget allows to do so.
I agree that whoever uses SEO will have the competitive advantage against whoever that doesn’t. I also think that SEO is not an easy subject to learn, that is why some companies still did not use SEO to optimize their search results. What do you think of the question of whether SEO is science or art?
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