The first International Day of Yoga was observed world over on June 21st 2015 by PM Narendra Modi. The United Nations has declared June 21st as the International Day Of Yoga. On this occasion I just thought of listing out the similarities between Yoga and SEO.
Yoga is not about exercise but to find out the sense of individuality within one’s self, the world and the nature. Similarly, SEO is not about rankings but about establishing your brand online
In Vedic Sanskrit, yoga means "to add", "to join", "to unite", or "to attach" in its most common literal sense. Yoga can take on meanings such as "connection", "contact", "union", "method", "application", "addition" and "performance". In simpler words, Yoga also means "combined".
When we optimize a website we literally try to see that our website gets correlated to the targeted search queries and thereby the targeted audience. But, before this happens the site has to be as per the norms of the search engines and needs to be crawled and indexed regularly by the search engines. All this has to be achieved harmoniously via a step by step process .
Just as in Yoga the union of the body and soul is achieved gradually with regular practice and patience, the SEO results need patience and regular monitoring of the website.
According to David Gordon White, from the 5th century CE onward, the core principles of "yoga" were more or less in place, and variations of these principles developed in various forms over time:
- Yoga, as an analysis of perception and cognition
- Yoga, as the rising and expansion of consciousness
- Yoga, as a path to omniscience
- Yoga, as a technique for entering into other bodies, generating multiple bodies, and the attainment of other supernatural accomplishments
SEO also can be compared to Yoga as per the above 4 points:
- SEO helps the search engines in the perception and cognition of the content of the website so that it can correlate it to the relevant search queries.
- As a result of genuine SEO the website gradually expands its search presence by adding various formats of content so that the brand can be found on various platforms of search, like image search, blog search, videos, etc.
- Hence, genuine SEO helps the website to be found on search engines via any devices and in various formats.
- Apart from the content format and the type of search results, SEO also makes the website capable of being found globally by gradually attaining search presence on increasing no. of country domains like, Google.com, Google.co.in, Google.co.uk, Google.com.au, etc. (In short international SEO helps you to achieve international search presence)
Apart from the spiritual goals, the physical postures of yoga are used to alleviate health problems, reduce stress and make the spine supple in contemporary times. Yoga is also used as a complete exercise program and physical therapy routine.
The three prominent types of yoga are:
- Karma yoga: The yoga of action
- Bhakti yoga: The yoga of devotion
- Jnana yoga: The yoga of knowledge
Apart from attaining good search presence for targeted search queries, the main goal of SEO is to help build a brand for the business , win the trust of the users and help in retaining it for a long time.
All this can be possible by working on :
- On-page factors
- Technical factors and
- Off-page factors
While the practice of yoga continues to rise in contemporary American culture, sufficient and adequate knowledge of the practice’s origins does not. According to Andrea R. Jain, Yoga is undoubtedly a movement for spiritual meditation, but now is being marketed as a supplement to a cardio routine. This scope "dilutes its identity." Contemporaries of this faith argue that the more popular yoga gets, the less concerned people become about its origins in history.
While the SEO industry shows a promising growth quantitatively and qualitatively, the true meaning of SEO is tarnished by black hat SEOs and newbies who promise quick results and measure its success by rankings alone. This dilutes the true meaning of SEO and defeats the main purpose of optimizing a site.
Yoga is both an Art and a Science...
SEO too is considered as an Art and a Science...
