Imagine you have an excellent shop but it is located in a hidden street that nobody ever reaches. That is exactly what happens to most websites that are not optimised for search engines. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the set of techniques that allow your website to appear in the top positions on Google and other search engines when someone looks for a product, service or information related to what you offer. In an increasingly competitive digital landscape, appearing on the first page is key to thriving and not going unnoticed.
How do search engines work?
Google uses programmes called crawlers that continuously browse the internet, analyse the content of each page and store the information in an index. When a user performs a search, the algorithm consults that index and ranks the results according to hundreds of factors: content relevance, loading speed, quality of inbound links, user experience and much more. Understanding this process is the starting point for any SEO strategy.
The three fundamental pillars of SEO
- Technical SEO: the search engine must be able to access your site without encountering obstacles. Three aspects are key here: loading speed (Google penalises slow pages), mobile-friendly design (more than 60% of searches are carried out on smartphones) and the use of the HTTPS protocol, which ensures secure connections and builds trust.
- On-page SEO: the power of keywords. Content is the core of any effective SEO strategy. The starting point is keyword research: identifying the exact terms your potential customers use when searching. Tools such as Google Search Console or Semrush help with this task. Once the keywords have been identified, you should incorporate them naturally into the page title (<title> tag), headings (H1, H2), the meta description and throughout the body text. Content must be useful, original and clearly answer the user’s search intent.
- Off-page SEO: building authority. A website’s reputation is measured, to a large extent, by its backlinks: links from other sites pointing to yours. For Google, these act as votes of confidence. The more relevant and reputable the websites linking to yours, the more authority your page will gain. Having a presence in industry directories, collaborating with blogs in your sector and promoting your content on social media helps these links to be generated organically.
First steps to get started today
- Register your business on Google Business Profile to improve your local visibility immediately.
- Install Google Search Console to monitor how Google indexes your site and to detect errors.
- Create quality content on a regular basis: a blog with articles answering your audience’s frequently asked questions is one of the best long-term SEO investments.
- Optimise your images: use descriptive file names and fill in the alt attribute with relevant keywords to make indexing easier.
SEO is a strategic investment that produces sustainable results over time. Galician businesses that integrate these practices into their digital presence will increase their visibility, attract qualified traffic and improve their competitiveness in an increasingly global market.
The Galician Economic Office offers you personalised advice free of charge to help you launch this initiative and make the most of the tools available.
