What Is SEO?
Search engine
optimization (SEO) - It is the practice to get targeted traffic to a website
from organic ranking of search engines. Common tasks associated with SEO
include creating high-quality content, optimizing content around specific
keywords, and building backlinks.
In other words:
SEO is about improving a site's ranking in the organic (non-paid)
section of search results.
The
main benefit of ranking for a specific keyword is that you can get
"free" traffic to your site, month after month.
Here are the topics that we will cover in the complete guide to
SEO:
- How Search Engines Work
- How SEO Works
- Organic vs. Paid Results
- Why Is SEO Important?
- Customers and Keywords
- SEO-Friendly
Content
- High-Quality
Content Examples
- On-Page
SEO Basics
- Intro
to Technical SEO
- Link
Building Basics
- Search
Intent
- Emerging
SEO Trends
How Search Engines Work
Now it's time to learn how search engines like Google actually
work.
When you search for something in Google (or any other search
engine), an algorithm works to get you in real time what the search engine
considers the "best" result.
In particular, Google scans its index of "hundreds of
billions" of pages to find a set of results that will best answer your
search.
How does Google determine "best" results?
Even though Google does not make public the internal workings of
its algorithm based on patents and statements filed with Google, we know that
websites and web pages are ranked by:
Relevance
If you search for "chocolate chip cookie recipes", you
do not want to see the web page about truck tires.
This is why Google looks first-to-fore for pages that are closely
related to your keywords.
However, Google does not rank only the "most relevant pages
at the top". This is because there are thousands (or millions) of relevant
pages for every search term.
For example, the keyword "cookie recipes" brings 349
million results to Google:
So to place the results in an order that creates the best bubbles
at the top, they rely on three other elements of their algorithm:
Rights
The authorization sounds like: Google's way of determining whether
the content is accurate and reliable.
The question is, how does Google know if a page is official?
They see the
number of other pages that link to that page:
(Links to other pages are known as "backlinks")
In general, the more links a page has, the higher it will rank:
(In fact, the ability by Google to measure authority via links is
what distinguishes it from search engines like Yahoo, which came before it).
Utility
The content may be relevant and official. But if it is not useful,
Google does not want to place that content at the top of search results.
In fact, Google has publicly stated that there is a difference
between "high quality content" and "useful" content.
For example, suppose you search for "Paleo Diet".
The first result you click on ("Result A") is written by
the world's leading expert on Paleo. And because there is so much quality
content on the page, many people have linked to it.
However, the material is completely unorganized. And it's full of
jargon that most people don't understand.
Conversely with another result ("result B").
It is written by relatively new people in the Paleo Diet. And
there are almost many links on their website that point to it.
However, their content is organized into separate sections. And it
is written in such a way that anyone can understand:
Well, this page is going to rank highly on the "utility
scale". Even if result B does not have that much trust or authority, it
will still perform well at Google.
(In fact, it may rank even higher than result A)
Google measures usability primarily based on "user experience
signals".
In other words: how users interact with search results. If Google
sees that people really like a particular search result, it will get a
significant increase in ranking:
My # 1 SEO tip for higher rankings
Create a website that people love! Search engines are designed to
measure various signals on the web so that they can find the websites that
people like the most. Play those signals right in their hands and not be
artificial.
And now it's time to put this stuff into practice with a
step-by-step SEO tutorial.
How SEO Works
SEO works by optimizing your
site for the search engine that you want to rank for, whether it’s Google,
Bing, Amazon or YouTube.
Specifically, your job is to
make sure that a search engine sees your site as the overall best result for a
person’s search.
How they determine the “best”
result is based on an algorithm that takes into account authority, relevancy to
that query, loading speed, and more.
(For example, Google has over 200 ranking factors in their
algorithm).
In most cases, when people
think “search engine optimization”, they think “Google SEO”. Which is why we’re going to focus
on optimizing your site for Google in this guide.
Organic vs. Paid
Results
Search engine
result pages are separated into two distinct sections: organic and paid results.
Organic Search Results
Organic search results
(sometimes referred to as “natural” results) are natural results that rank
based 100% on merit.
In other words, there’s no way
to pay Google or other search engines in order to rank higher in the organic
search results.
Search engine rank the organic
search results based on hundreds of different ranking factors. But in general,
organic results are deemed by Google to be the most relative, trustworthy, and
authoritative websites or web pages on the subject.
I have more details how search
engine algorithms work later on. But for now, the important thing to keep in
mind is:
When we talk about “SEO”, we’re
talking about ranking your website higher up in the organic search results.
Paid Results
Paid search
results are ads that appear on top of or underneath the organic results.
Paid ads are
completely independent of the organic listings. Advertisers in the paid results
section are “ranked” by how much they’re are willing to pay for a single
visitor from a particular set of search results (known as “Pay Per Click Advertising”).
Why Is SEO Important?
In short: search is a BIG
source of traffic.
In fact, here’s a breakdown of where most
website traffic originates:
As you can see, nearly 60% of all traffic on the web starts with a Google search. And if you add
together traffic from other popular search engines (like Bing, Yahoo, and
YouTube), 70.6% of all traffic originates
from a search engine.
Let’s illustrate the
importance of SEO with an example…
Let’s say that you run a party
supply company. According to the Google Keyword Planner, 110,000 people search
for “party supplies” every single month.
Considering that first
result in Google gets around 20% of all clicks, that’s 22,000 visitors to your
website each month if you show up at the top.
But let’s quantify that – how
much are those visitors worth?
The average advertiser for
that search phrase spends about 1 dollar per click. Which means that the web
traffic of 22,000 visitors is worth roughly $22,000 a month.
And that’s just for that
search phrase. If your site is SEO-friendly, then you can rank for hundreds
(and sometimes thousands) of different keywords.
In other industries, like real
estate or insurance, the value of search engine traffic is significantly
higher.
For example, advertisers are
paying over $45 per click on the search phrase “auto insurance price quotes.”
Customers and Keywords
This is not an important step to skip before you start diving into the title tag and HTML's naughty gritty:
Customer and Keyword Research.
Here you find out what your customers search for… and the exact words and phrases they use to search. In this way, you can rank your site for the things that your customers search for every day.
sound good? Here is how to do it
Customer Research
If you already run an online business, you probably have a good idea of what your target customer looks like.
(Also known as "Customer Person").
Here's an example:
This type of customer research is not just to help you create the products that people want. It is also a super important part of SEO and content marketing.
I will explain…
To be successful with SEO, you need to build content around the topics that your customers search for.
And unless you know who your customer is, it's almost impossible to understand the types of things they discover (later on that).
The best way to dig deeper into your target customer? HubSpot Make My Person Tool.
This nifty free tool helps you build a customer personality, step by step. At the end of the process you will have a detailed avatar that you can refer to repeatedly.
Nice!
Now you have a customer personal, it's time for the next step: keyword research.
Here you drill down into the exact words and phrases (search queries) that customers type in the search box.
In general, keywords fall into two main buckets: the keywords you use to search for (product keywords) that you sell.
You have keywords that are used by your target audience when they are not specifically looking for information (informative keywords) that you sell.
How about an example?
Explain that you run an e-commerce website that sells tennis shoes.
Your product keyword bucket would look like this:
Tennis shoes free shipping
Nike tennis shoes
Tennis shoes for flat feet
On the other hand, informational keywords are things that your audience loves when they don't necessarily search for shoes:
Second Service Tutorial
How to prevent unexpected errors
Proper backhand form
How to hit toppin serve
And to be successful with SEO, you want to optimize the pages on your website around both types of keywords.
In this way, when your customer searches for your product, you show up in search engine results.
And for those keywords that your customers use when they are not looking for your product or service, you also show for those.
Keyword Research Tips
Here are some tips to help you find keywords.
First, use Google Autocomplete.
You have probably already seen this feature.
Whenever you start writing something in Google, you get a bunch of search suggestions:
I recommend typing keyword ideas into Google and avoiding any upcoming suggestions.
Second, type the words and phrases answers in public.
This free tool is great for searching informational keywords.
For example, if you run a blog about the Paleo diet, you would type "Paleo diet" into ATP:
