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Do you want to improve your findability in search engines? Get help from real SEO specialists! We help you make your website easier to find. Rank higher in the organic search results, become findable for your target audience, and reach your growth goals.

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What is SEO?

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a continuous improvement process that focuses on improving a website’s visibility and findability in organic search results from search engines such as Google. The goal is to increase traffic to your website by ranking higher for relevant search terms that match what your target audience is searching for.

The search results page (SERP) consists of different types of results, divisible into two types:

  1. Paid search results.
  2. Organic search results.

Paid search results include Google Shopping ads. Organic search results also include featured snippets and People Also Ask questions.

The goal of SEO

Improving your website for relevant search terms is essential for attracting new visitors daily, without having to pay for ads. As your website ranks higher in search results, you increase your chances of attracting visitors and driving conversions. SEO emphasizes the four main pillars of search engine optimization:

  • Technique
  • Content
  • UX
  • Authority (link building).

The goal of SEO is to make your website more relevant and valuable to your target audience. SEO is not about manipulating search engines, something unfortunately still thought by many marketers. Search engines, such as Google, are becoming more sophisticated and better understand what your target audience is looking for and valuing. Therefore, it is important to put your target audience at the center of every optimization you perform.

The four pillars of SEO

The four pillars of SEO

This includes improving the technical aspects of your website such as loading speed, mobile responsiveness, URL structure, and proper use of structured data. A technically optimized website is more easily crawled and indexed by search engines, leading to better visibility. Moreover, it contributes to a better user experience.

Creating high-quality, relevant and unique content that matches users’ search intent is important. This includes using it to provide valuable information and making your content attractive and easy to read. Good content not only attracts more visitors, but also drives engagement, creates conversions and exudes your knowledge and authority.

With Google’s increasing focus on E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness), UX is playing an increasingly important role in SEO. This is about providing user-friendly and intuitive navigation, ensuring good load times, projecting your knowledge and experience, and showing that your business is trustworthy.

Authority is often called link building in the SEO world. One way to increase your website’s authority is by building quality backlinks. This involves relevance and the reliability of the backlinks, not quality.

Building quality backlinks is an old SEO concept and still, to some extent, relevant. Think of it as voting: the more relevant votes you get, the more important your website becomes.

Today, the concept of “Authority” within SEO is broader than just link building. In the complete context of SEO, authority refers to the extent to which a website is seen as a reliable and relevant source of information in your field.

The importance of SEO

The importance of SEO cannot be stressed enough, especially in today’s still growing digital world. Every day, millions of users search for a solution or answer to their questions and needs.

As a marketing manager or business owner, it is important to understand that SEO is not only about attracting traffic to your website, but also about attracting the right kind of traffic. By that, we mean visitors who are actually looking for what you and your business offer.

The difference between SEO and SEA

To better explain the importance of search engine optimization, it is good to know that there are different ways to get traffic from search engines to your website. Search engines contain “normal” (organic) search results and paid search results. For traffic from paid search results, you pay per click to the search engine through programs such as Google Ads and Bing Ads.

From organic search results, you don’t pay per click, but search engines want to show the most relevant search results in return. Organic search results consist not only of search results with a meta title and meta description, but also results such as featured snippets, “People also ask” results and local search results.

Less reliance on ads

As a business, you would rather not be completely dependent on visitors coming to your website through paid ads. Because, do you stop paying? Then the search engine no longer shows you in the search results. You are then no longer findable for your target audience. Visitors who come to your website from organic search results – besides investing in an agency or SEO specialists – don’t cost any money. To get off the drip-feed of paid advertising and visitors, your website must be findable on relevant search terms. If you rank well on these, you’ll get more relevant visitors. And more relevant visitors means potential sales.

Niklas Lührs
Niklas Lührs

Niklas moved to the Netherlands from Germany in 2019 and has been working in cross-border marketing ever since. At SmartRanking, he is our technical SEO specialist and team lead.

His expertise lies in technical audits, structured data, SEO migrations, and supporting his team with all kinds of SEO questions and SEO strategies.

Niklas Lührs

Lotte Janssen
Lotte Janssen

Lotte is an operations manager and SEO consultant. She wants not only her clients to be number one, but also her colleagues. She is involved in various SEO projects and mentoring colleagues. Her favorite aspects of SEO are developing strategies and topical authority.

Lotte Janssen

Recent cases: Payt

Melvin Achter
Melvin Achter

Melvin is an SEO consultant and team lead. He has been fully focused on SEO since 2017. With both agency and in-house experience, he is able to empathize with the client’s wishes and is a good discussion partner.

His interests within SEO lie mainly in the areas of strategy, technical analysis, and authority.

Melvin Achter

Recent cases: Payt

Rose-Anne Moorman
Rose-Anne Moorman

Rose-Anne Moorman

Vroni Huisman
Vroni Huisman

Vroni Huisman

Frank has been in online marketing since 2014, working as an SEO consultant and team lead. Having first done both SEA, SEO and socials, he has focused entirely on organic findability since 2019.

His interests within SEO lie mainly in performing (technical) audits. A pragmatic approach is something that characterizes him.

Frank van de Streek

Jarik Oosting
Jarik Oosting

Met een passie voor SEO en een ongeëvenaarde drive om resultaten te behalen, is Jarik Oosting de drijvende kracht achter SmartRanking. Met meer dan 15 jaar ervaring in het veld heeft Jarik een schat aan kennis opgebouwd, variërend van technische SEO tot complexe migraties. Als oprichter van SmartRanking heeft hij een team van gelijkgestemde SEO specialisten samengebracht die bedrijven helpen hun online groei te realiseren. Daarnaast schreef hij het boek GEO – Zichtbaar zijn in de antwoorden van AI over hoe bedrijven vindbaar blijven nu AI-zoekmachines het zoeklandschap veranderen en is hij spreker.

Zijn favoriete onderdelen van SEO zijn het automatiseren, consultancy en strategie.

Jarik Oosting

Oprichter

Marthijs Wijngaarden

Annita Oosting
Annita Oosting

Annita Oosting

Trudy Havinga
Trudy Havinga

Trudy Havinga

Frits van Sante

Myrna Bekkering
Myrna Bekkering

Myrna Bekkering

Bas Hettinga
Bas Hettinga

Bas is sinds november 2022 actief als SEO-specialist bij SmartRanking, met focus op on-page optimalisatie. Hij richt zich op het optimaliseren van websites om de bezoeker te helpen in de zoektocht naar een product of dienst.

Ook is hij bezig met ontwikkelingen op het gebied van AI, waar hij actief mee experimenteert. Dit stelt SmartRanking in staat om de content naar een hoger niveau te tillen.

Bas Hettinga

SEO-specialist

Recent cases: Payt

Saïdou Godje
Saïdou Godje

Saïdou Godje

Shawn Buckles
Shawn Buckles

Shawn joined SmartRanking as a technical SEO specialist on July 1, 2024. A personal narrative will follow.

Shawn Buckles

Tijmen Ketellapper
Tijmen Ketellapper

Iris Tuinder

Alexandra Klosener
Alexandra Klosener

Alexandra Klösener

Lennard Mulder
Lennard Mulder

Lennard Mulder

Sanne Broeils
Sanne Broeils

Sanne Broeils

Jasmijn van der Wijk
Jasmijn van der Wijk

Jasmijn van der Wijk

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