What is SEO, how it works & learning SEO in 6 simple steps

Technical SEO ensures search engines can efficiently crawl, index, and rank your site. SEO plays a crucial role in ensuring your website reaches the right audience. In addition to search visibility, SEO drives quality traffic, improves user experience, and helps you stand out in search results. In the 6th chapter of our SEO guide for beginners, we will discuss backlinks – one of the most important aspects of search engine optimization. If your focus keyword is “best content marketing strategy for small businesses”, it would be crazy to use it in all the on-page elements mentioned above just to tick them all off the list. White hat SEO, on the other hand, refers to all the regular SEO techniques that stick to the guidelines and rules.

Link building strategies

what is seo

This way the search engine has a whole index or database of results that it can now display for the search queries that it gets. Staying curious and excited to learn about new SEO strategies is key to enjoying the process. This allows you to continually improve your website offerings and create lasting change while helping you stay on top of emerging trends such as search AI. To help bolster your SEO efforts, here’s a collection of free and paid keyword research tools, backlink analysis software, and more.

These practices improve visibility in local searches and enhance customer trust. 4) Page SpeedFast-loading websites are favored by both users and search engines. Delays in page loading can lead to high bounce rates, negatively impacting rankings. Techniques such as image compression, browser caching, and minimizing code can improve page speed, ensuring users stay engaged and search engines rank the site higher.

what is seo

What tool would you use to find out whether Google indexed your page?

what is seo

Or something user-friendly that specializes in SEO audits, like Raven Tools. And if we scale these up, it should lead to even more passive links in the future. And, if you’re lucky, you should find at least one broken link on that page. Then, once you’ve found a page with lots of outbound links, run Check My Links on that page. If you want to go more advanced with your content optimization, you can use something like Clearscope.

  • Just stuffing random keywords to your content is not enough to rank well anymore.
  • However, link-building strategies should focus on organic growth rather than manipulative tactics to avoid penalties from search engines.
  • But the ‘how’ of implementing SEO practices into your website can feel confusing to many.
  • You can start building your reputation with Semrush’s Link Building Tool.
  • When it comes to SEO, there are two different approaches that organizations take to optimizing their sites for the search engines – black hat vs. white hat SEO tactics.

They also have a YouTube channel where they upload software reviews that complement their SEO Anomaly existing blog posts. At the time of writing this, according to Ahrefs (a popular SEO researching tool), Calm’s website gets 1.3M monthly visitors from SEO alone. By the end of this, you’ll have a clear understanding of how to approach SEO for your website — whether you’re a media blog, ecommerce site, or SaaS website. …it is inevitable that the search engines will eventually figure out what you are doing and penalize your site. By giving your SEO meaning, you can catch the attention of more search engine users. In addition, you want to make sure that each piece of the content focuses on just one or two keywords.

Stage 5: The Rise of Content and Keyword Relevance

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a process of optimizing your website with the goal of improving your rankings in the search results and getting more organic (non-paid) traffic. While major search engines don’t make their algorithms public, there are some factors that experts generally accept as having some impact on your website’s visibility in search engine results. Keyword research will help you identify the most relevant words and phrases people use when they’re searching for topics that are related to your products or services. You can use keywords in your website copy and content, which will prompt search engines to surface your web pages for searchers. Search engines take many factors into account, from how quickly your website loads to how many people click to your page from search, to rank websites. Having good SEO will make search engine algorithms more likely to show your website to searchers.

Next, your agency should offer SEO content services to fill your site with authoritative, helpful, optimized content. Without SEO content, your site won’t appear in search results, and people won’t be able to find your site online. Technical SEO includes auditing and updating backend site elements, like your code and page speed, so your site performs well in search and for users.