SEO basics

For complete guide of what is SEO? Let’s go over the fundamental concepts, vocabulary, complete SEO guide and commonly asked questions before we go into particular strategies and facets of the field. Have you prepared? Let’s begin!

Chapter navigation

• What is SEO?
• SEO in a nutshell
• Useful vocabulary

What is SEO?

The process of optimizing your website for search engines with the aim of raising your placement in search results and gaining more natural (unpaid) traffic is known as search engine optimization (SEO). When search engines first appeared in the 1990s, SEO had its beginnings. It is a crucial marketing tactic nowadays and an industry that is constantly expanding.

PPC optimization is not included in search engine optimization, which exclusively concentrates on organic search results. A component of search engine marketing is both SEO and PPC. When looking for something on the internet, individuals use search engines. And you want to give that something the response. No matter what you do with your website—whether you offer goods or services, run a blog, or anything else—search engine optimization is a necessity.

Although SEO stands for “search engine optimization,” given Google’s present dominance, the name “Google optimization” is more appropriate. Because of this, even though many of the tactics and recommendations in this article are general and may be used for any search engine optimization, Google SEO is the focus of all of them.

SEO in a nutshell

You don’t have to be familiar with ALL the elements and precise formulas Google employs to rank your website. But in order to succeed, you must address the essential SEO elements.

Technical issues – The bowl stands for all the necessary technical considerations (often referred to as technical or on-page SEO). There wouldn’t be anything to contain the soup if there wasn’t a suitable bowl.

Backlinks of high quality — The seasoning stands in for the links that give your website more authority. You can have excellent content and a website that is flawlessly optimized, but in the end, you need to earn authority by obtaining quality backlinks. This is the final component that will complete your SEO soup. We’ll examine each of these features from a practical standpoint in the chapters that follow.

Useful vocabulary

As soon as you begin researching SEO, you’ll come across a few common words that attempt to group its many facets or strategies, including:

• On-page SEO & off-page SEO
• Black hat SEO & white hat SEO

On-page SEO & off-page SEO

The phrases “off-page” and “on-page” Based on whether you carry out the SEO efforts on the website, SEO classifies the actions. Everything you can do on a website, from content optimization to technological facets, falls under the category of on-page SEO.

• Keyword research
• Content optimization
• Title tag optimization
• Page performance optimization
• Internal linking

The objective is to create flawless content and UX while communicating to search engines the topic of the page. Obtaining high-quality backlinks is the main goal of off-page SEO in order to convince search engines that your website is trustworthy and valuable. Link building strategies could include:

• Guest blogging
• Email outreach
• Broken link building

Off-page SEO is strongly related to other aspects of online marketing, such as branding and social media marketing, which indirectly contribute to the development of your website’s authority and trust. Always keep in mind that an effective SEO plan includes both on-page and off-page SEO actions.

White hat SEO vs. black hat SEO

Western films are where black hats and white hats first appeared. They acted as both the good and the bad guys. The phrases are used in SEO to distinguish between two types of SEOs: those that follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and those who don’t.

Black hat SEO is a collection of unethical (and frequently spams) techniques used to raise a website’s rankings. These methods can boost your website to the top of search results quickly, but sooner or later, search engines will most likely penalize and blacklist the website.

Black hat On the other side, SEO refers to all conventional SEO methods that follow the regulations. It is a long-term strategy in which effective optimization, high-quality content, and a user-centered mindset produce strong rankings as a byproduct. While “white hat” tactics are preferred, SEO professionals disagree on whether specific link-building strategies are acceptable (including link buying).

Search engines

You will discover what search engines are, how they operate, and what the most crucial SEO ranking variables in Google are in the second chapter of this SEO tutorial.

Chapter navigation

• What are search engines?
• How search engines work
• Google algorithm
• Ranking factors

What are search engines?

An online tool called a search engine facilitates online information discovery. Google is a typical example. In actuality, Google is perhaps the only example you need to be aware of. Just have a look at the graph showing the market share of global search engines (Stat counter data):

As a result, when we refer to search engines in this manual, we primarily mean Google. Similar ideas apply to other search engines, so as long as your website is optimized for Google, you should be good to go for them as well.

Workings of search engines

These are the main steps involved in how search engines operate:

• Crawling
• Indexing
• selecting the outcomes and finally, presenting the user with the search results.

The procedure appears to be as follows:

Crawling

Search engines continuously monitor all of the internet’s webpages through a process called crawling. They employ tiny bits of software (referred to as crawlers or bots) to follow each link and find new pages (as well as updates to the pages they discovered before). Google Webmaster Trend Analyst Martin Split offers this succinct explanation of the crawling procedure:

Indexing

The data is indexed once the website has been crawled. The search engines make an effort to categories, interpret, and understand the pages before storing them in the index. The search engine index is essentially a massive library of all the websites that have been crawled for the sole purpose of understanding them and making them accessible for use as search results.

Selecting The Outcomes

The search engine searches the index after receiving a search query from a web user and returns the most relevant pages. A SERP is the term for the results list (Search Engines Results Page). The Google Search Algorithm will be discussed in more detail in the paragraphs that follow.

Google algorithm

All the different algorithms, machine learning techniques, and technologies that Google employs to rank websites are together referred to as the “Google Search Algorithm.”

They take into account a number of aspects, including:

• Meaning of the query: The search engine must comprehend precisely what the user is looking for.
  The pages’ relevance – the page has to be pertinent to the search term
• Content quality: The search engine makes an effort to select the top outcomes in terms of content quality.
• Usability of pages: The pages themselves ought to be navigable (in terms of accessibility, readability, safety, etc.)
• Context and settings – last but not least, the user’s settings, location, and search history are taken into account.

The Google algorithm needs to be updated and adjusted on a regular basis, much like any other sophisticated system. Google typically sends out a few fundamental algorithm adjustments each year in addition to the daily minor algorithm updates.

Ranking Criteria

Of course, search engines don’t provide the precise formulas used in creating their algorithms. However, a lot of the ranking determinants are generally recognized. In the field of SEO, ranking factors are a frequently discussed subject.

Practically speaking, it’s crucial to concentrate on variables with a known effect while attempting to maintain a “good score” across all domains. Of course, search engines don’t employ everything people believe to be a ranking criteria (if something correlates with the higher rankings, it is not necessarily something Google uses in their algorithm). Some established ranking factors, however, have a very slight influence on the ranks.

It should go without saying that your website must be crawlable if you want to rank well in search results.

• Quality and quantity of links – Google will give you greater authority if more high-quality pages connect to your website.
• Content that is focused on user purpose is important for SEO since it goes beyond just the words you employ.
• comprehensiveness – satisfy your visitor and Google will be satisfied as well.
• Be extremely cautious not to use duplicate content on your websites.
• EAT stands for expertise, authority, and trust. Google’s quality raters examine the E-A-T signals. Never forget to develop and demonstrate your knowledge and reliability, and write solely about subjects you are knowledgeable in.
• Some topics require more freshness than others, but you should still frequently update your content to keep it current.
• Improve your sites’ click-through rate (CTR) by optimizing the title tags and meta descriptions.
• Make sure your visitors don’t have to wait too long for the page to load on your website. If they do, there’s a good possibility they’ll leave before visiting.
• Work well on any device and screen size – keep in mind that the majority of internet consumers access websites through mobile devices!

Other significant variables that could improve your rankings include:

• Depth of content
• image enhancement
• topical expertise
• a page with good organization
• Social networking
• utilize HTTPS