SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” In simple terms, SEO means the process of improving your website to increase its visibility in Google, Microsoft Bing, and other search engines whenever people search for:

  • Products you sell.
  • Services you provide.
  • Information on topics in which you have deep expertise and/or experience.

The better visibility your pages have in search results, the more likely you are to be found and clicked on. Ultimately, the goal of search engine optimization is to help attract website visitors who will become customers, clients or an audience that keeps coming back.

Why is SEO important?

Whenever people want to go somewhere, do something, find information, research or buy a product/service – their journey typically begins with a search. 

But today, Users may search on traditional web search engines (e.g., Google, Microsoft Bing), social platforms (e.g., YouTube, TikTok) or retailer websites (e.g., Amazon). 

Trillions of searches are conducted every year. Search is often the primary source of traffic for websites, which makes it essential to be “search engine friendly” on any platform where people can search for your brand or business. 

What this all means is that improving your visibility, and ranking higher in search results than your competition, can positively impact your bottom line,

SEO is also incredibly important because the search engine results pages (or SERPs) are super competitive – filled with search features (and PPC ads). SERP features include:

  • Knowledge panels.
  • Featured snippets.
  • Maps.
  • Images. 
  • Videos.
  • Top stories (news).
  • People Also Ask.
  • Carousels.

Types of SEO

There are three types of SEO:

1. On-Page SEO (On-Site SEO):

On-site SEO refers to the practice of optimizing elements on a website, such as the content and HTML code, to improve its rankings in search engine results pages and attract more relevant traffic to the website. This is different from off-site SEO, which involves optimizing external factors like backlinks and social media signals.

SEO Keyword Research

It involves identifying relevant search terms (keywords) that users are searching for and incorporating those keywords strategically into website content to improve search engine visibility and relevance.

Quality SEO Content

Quality SEO content means creating content that is both user-friendly and search engine-friendly by focusing on the needs and interests of the target audience, using relevant keywords, and attracting links and shares to improve search engine rankings.

Internal Linking For SEO

Internal Linking For SEO involves placing links within a website to connect relevant pages together, in order to improve user experience and help search engines understand the website’s hierarchy and content.

Metadata SEO Optimization

Metadata SEO Optimization involves optimizing the HTML elements such as title tags, header tags, and meta descriptions to accurately and briefly convey what the page is about to both search engines and users. In order to improve the visibility and relevance of the page in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Image SEO Optimization

Image SEO Optimization is the process of optimizing website images with descriptive file names, alt tags, and captions to improve both user experience and search engine visibility, with the goal of generating more traffic to a website from Google image search.

URL Structure 

URL structure refers to the way a website’s URLs are organized and designed, incorporating relevant keywords to help search engines understand website content and improve rankings, while also improving user experience and facilitating link-building efforts.

2. Off-Page SEO (Off-Site SEO): 

Off-page SEO, also called off-site SEO, is the practice of improving a website’s search engine ranking by optimizing factors outside of the website itself. This can be done by building high-quality backlinks, promoting the website on social media, and other forms of online marketing.

The goal is to increase the website’s authority, reputation, and relevance in the eyes of search engines, which can result in higher search engine rankings and more organic traffic to the website.

Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is a common off-page SEO technique used for building backlinks. 

It is when you write an article for another website and include a backlink to your own site in exchange. This can improve your website’s visibility and authority, and attract more traffic to your site.

H.A.R.O

Responding to journalists’ and reporters’ queries to gain media exposure and earn backlinks to improve SEO.

Competitor Research and Analysis

Examining competitors’ backlinks, content, and keywords to gain insights and improve one’s own SEO strategy.

Internet Ads

Placing paid ads on external websites and search engines to drive traffic and generate leads for a website or business, ultimately improving its online visibility.

Press Distribution

Sharing press releases with relevant media outlets to secure backlinks, attract potential customers, and increase brand recognition.

Brand Signals

Brand signals in SEO refer to the online presence and reputation of a brand, which is established through activities such as social media engagement, online directory listings, and mentions on other websites. These signals can help search engines determine the authority and credibility of a brand, and can positively impact search engine rankings.

3. Technical SEO

Technical SEO involves making website optimizations that help search engines crawl and index a website more easily, thereby improving its search engine ranking. This includes tasks such as optimizing site load time, ensuring that robot.txt files are properly configured, and setting up redirects correctly.

The goal of technical SEO is to make a website more accessible and user-friendly for both search engines and website visitors.

Site Load Time

Site load time optimization involves improving website speed and performance to provide a better user experience and achieve higher search engine rankings.

Mobile-Friendliness

Mobile-friendliness refers to the design and functionality of a website that is optimized for viewing on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. It ensures that the website is responsive to different screen sizes, loads quickly, and is easy to navigate on mobile devices. 

Crawl Error Identification 

Crawl error identification is the process of finding and resolving errors that prevent search engines from accessing website content. These errors can include broken links, missing pages, and other issues that can negatively impact search engine visibility. By fixing crawl errors, website owners can improve their website’s search engine rankings and overall visibility.

Keyword Cannibalization Audit

A keyword cannibalization audit is a process of identifying and fixing instances where multiple pages on a website are competing for the same or similar keywords, which can result in a dilution of search engine visibility and a decrease in overall organic performance.

Duplicate Content Audit

A duplicate content audit involves identifying and fixing instances of duplicate content on a website that can negatively impact search engine rankings. 

Site Structure

Site structure refers to the process of creating a clear and organized website structure that makes it easy for users and search engines to navigate and understand website content. A clear site structure can also improve user experience by making it easier for visitors to find the information they are looking for.

How does SEO work?

Many other things factor into how SEO works. What follows is a high-level look at the most important knowledge and process elements. 

Six critical areas, in combination, make SEO work:

1. Understanding how search engines work

Simply, if you want people to find your business via search – on any platform – you need to understand the technical processes behind how the engine works – and then make sure you are providing all the right “signals” to influence that visibility. 

When talking about traditional web search engines like Google, there are four separate stages of search:

  • Crawling: Search engines use crawlers to discover pages on the web by following links and using sitemaps.
  • Rendering: Search engines generate how the page will look using HTML, JavaScript and CSS information.
  • Indexing: Search engines analyze the content and metadata of the pages it has discovered and add them to a database (though there’s no guarantee every page on your website will be indexed).
  • Ranking: Complex algorithms look at a variety of signals to determine whether a page is relevant and of high-enough quality to show when searchers enter a query.

But optimizing for Google search is different from optimizing for search other platforms like YouTube or Amazon. 

Let’s take Facebook, for example, where factors such as engagement (Likes, comments, shares, etc.) and who people are connected to matter. Then, on Twitter, signals like recency, interactions, or the author’s credibility are important. 

And further complicating things: search engines have added machine learning elements in order to surface content – making it even harder to say “this” or “that” resulted in better or worse performance.

2. Researching

Research is a key part of SEO. Some forms of research that will improve SEO performance include:

  • Audience research: It’s important to understand your target audience or market. Who are they (i.e., their demographics and psychographics)? What are their pain points? What questions do they have that you can answer? 
  • Keyword research: This process helps you identify and incorporate relevant and valuable search terms people use into your pages – and understand how much demand and competition there is to rank for these keywords.
  • Competitor research: What are your competitors doing? What are their strengths and weaknesses? What types of content are they publishing? 
  • Brand/business/client research: What are their goals – and how can SEO help them achieve those goals?
  • Website research: A variety of SEO audits can uncover opportunities and issues on a website that are preventing success in organic search. Some audits to consider: technical SEO, content, link profile and E-E-A-T. 
  • SERP analysis: This will help you understand the search intent for a given query (e.g., is it commercial, transactional, informational or navigational) and create content that is more likely to earn rankings or visibility.

3. Planning

An SEO strategy is your long-term action plan. You need to set goals – and a plan for how you will reach them. 

Think of it your SEO strategy as a roadmap. The path you take likely will change and evolve over time – but the destination should remain clear and unchanged.

Your SEO plan may include things such as:

  • Setting goals (e.g., OKRs, SMART) and expectations (i.e., timelines/milestones).
  • Defining and aligning meaningful KPIs and metrics.
  • Deciding how projects will be created and implemented (internal, external or a mix).
  • Coordinating and communicating with internal and external stakeholders.
  • Choosing and implementing tools/technology.
  • Hiring, training and structuring a team.
  • Setting a budget.
  • Measuring and reporting on results.
  • Documenting the strategy and process.

4. Creating and implementing

Once all the research is done, it’s time to turn ideas into action. That means:

  • Creating new content: Advising your content team on what content needs to be created.
  • Recommending or implementing changes or enhancements to existing pages: This could include updating and improving the content, adding internal links, incorporating keywords/topics/entities, or identifying other ways to optimize it further.
  • Removing old, outdated or low-quality content: The types of content that aren’t ranking well, driving converting traffic or helping you achieve your SEO goals.

5. Monitoring and maintaining

You need to know when something goes wrong or breaks on your website. Monitoring is critical. 

You need to know if traffic drops to a critical page, pages become slow, unresponsive or fall out of the index, your entire website goes offline, links break, or any other number of potential catastrophic issues.

6. Analyzing, assessing and reporting on performance

If you don’t measure SEO, you can’t improve it. To make data-driven decisions about SEO, you’ll need to use:

  • Website analytics: Set up and use tools (at minimum, free tools such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools) to collect performance data.
  • Tools and platforms: There are many “all-in-one” platforms (or suites) that offer multiple tools, but you can also choose to use only select SEO tools to track performance on specific tasks. Or, if you have the resources and none of the tools on the market do exactly what you want, you can make your own tools.

After you’ve collected the data, you’ll need to report on progress. You can create reports using software or manually. 

Performance reporting should tell a story and be done at meaningful time intervals, typically comparing to previous report periods (e.g., year over year). This will depend on the type of website (typically, this will be monthly, quarterly, or some other interval), 

Core Elements of SEO

As you move into the world of digital marketing and SEO, people will start throwing around terms and phrases that you don’t understand. With all that jargon, it helps to have a quick glossary of SEO elements and terms. Here are some of the most common:

  1. Audience: Audience, sometimes referred to as the target audience, is “a group of consumers characterized by behavior and specific demographics. Target audiences are a pillar of most businesses influencing decision making for marketing strategy, such as where to spend money on ads, how to appeal to customers, and even what product to build next.” Determining the target audience will influence nearly every other aspect of SEO.
  2. Searcher Intent: This term is used interchangeably with user intent and audience intent, and it refers to the purpose of an online search. There are four types of searcher intent:
    1. Informational intent
    2. Navigational intent
    3. Transactional intent
    4. Commercial investigation
  3. Keywords: Keywords are “any search term entered into Google (or another search engine) that has a results page where websites are listed.” The term is slightly misleading, as a keyword can be a singular word or a phrase that has multiple words in it. Keywords are used by marketers to optimize website content to help sites and pages rank higher.
  4. Meta Description: Meta descriptions get a bit more into the technical aspect of search engines, but they greatly influence SERPs. Meta descriptions are “an HTML element that provides a brief summary of a web page. A page’s meta description tag is displayed as part of the search snippet in a search engine results page (SERP) and is meant to give the user an idea of the content that exists within the page and how it relates to their search query.”
  5. Content: Just as it sounds, content is any text, audio or visual material that appears on your website. Believe it or not, all of those components can be improved with SEO tactics. Content is king is an overused phrase in the world of digital marketing, but it’s actually true. Content is the main ingredient of any website, and it should be the central focus of SEO strategy and improvements.
  6. Backlinks: Backlinks are sometimes referred to as inbound and incoming links, and they are part of any off-page SEO strategy. Backlinks are created when one website links back to another — in the case of improving SEO, you want to have as many backlinks as you can. Backlinks show Google that you are an authority on a particular topic and essentially work as a “vote of confidence” from one website to another.
  7. Site Architecture: Site architecture is “the hierarchical structure of your website pages. This structure is reflected through internal linking. Your website’s structure should help users easily find information and help search engine crawlers understand the relationship between different pages.” Google and other search engines take into account how well — or how poorly — your site is organized. The easier it is for a user to navigate, the higher it will likely rank.
  8. Site Speed: Just as it sounds, site speed is “how quickly users are able to see and interact with content.” As we’ve mentioned before, the path between the user and your content needs to be as direct as possible, and speed plays an important role. If your site is slow to load, loads in stages or returns a 404 message (this is the worst case scenario), search engines will ding you for that. Optimizing search speed is an important element of good SEO and can mean the difference between ranking on page one and page two.
  9. Schema: Another more technical aspect of SEO is schema. Schema is “a structured data vocabulary that helps search engines better understand the info on your website in order to serve rich results. These markups allow search engines to see the meaning and relationships behind entities mentioned on your site. For this reason, schema markup has become a hot topic of SEO.”

Conclution

SEO never ends. Search engines, user behavior and your competitors are always changing. Websites change and move (and break) over time. Content gets stale. Your processes should improve and become more efficient.

Bottom line: There’s always something you can be monitoring, testing or improving.