Search Engine Optimization is an analytical, technical and creative process carried out to improve the perceptibility of a website in search engines. The main function of SEO is to promote more and more unpaid useful traffic that finally converts into sales. SEO is like a marathon so you’re in for a long game. These days, SEO seems to be everything at the same time, from optimizing pages for the readability of search engines to creating the perfect content to match the searchers’ needs. Industry experts agree that the definition of SEO itself is evolving. If you want to wrap your head around it but are scared off by complex concepts and technical terms, then this tutorial for beginners might help you in many ways.
Search Engines
Yahoo, Google, Baidu, Yandex, Naver, and Bing are all commonly used search engines. A search engine collects information and content from all over the web and stores it in a database. The engines differ from one another because of the size of their database, specialization in market/type of content and the way they determine the relevant pages. Google rules the market because of the sheer size of its index, along with the way it calculates page relevancy.
How does Google work?
The entire process in which Google works is split into three parts: Crawling, indexing, and returning queries.
Crawling:
Google starts with one webpage, then goes on to find links on those webpages, and follows them to discover other webpages. Then it finds all the links on those pages and the next pages. Eventually, they can discover pretty much everything on the web. Google uses a computer program referred to as “crawler,” its function is to discover (crawl) webpages, and links.
Indexing:
After finding pages on the web, the job of spiders is to extract data from them and store or “index” data in Google’s database which is then shown in the search results. In SEO, it is ensured that the data that Google indexes after crawling the pages is as accurate as possible.
Returning queries
If you enter a search query into Google, it searches in its database for the webpages that are most relevant to your query and later displays them as search results. The relevancy is determined by its algorithm.
Optimizing websites for Google
Websites are optimized in two categories namely on-page and off-page optimization.
On-Page SEO: It is about adjusting elements on a webpage so that Google understands what it is all about. It also recognizes how amazing it is and then decides the position it deserves in the search results.
Off-Page SEO: It is about creating lots of backlinks so that Google can deem your page trustworthy. The more and better-quality backlinks you have, the more your pages are going to be prioritized in the search results.
Understand what keywords people are searching for
People might look for your business online in tons of diverse ways. For instance, let’s say that you are a fashion designer in California, people might search for “fashion designer in California” or “fashion designer near me.” They might phrase it differently, but they are asking for the same thing. Google Trends is a good option that shows you the relative popularity of any search query that you enter.
Create content that people want to see
If you want to rank for a specific topic or keyword, then you’ll have to optimize your content for “search intent.” It’s pretty amusing that you don’t have to guess the search intent because Google’s algorithm already functions to serve the most pertinent content for each search query, you can use it to your advantage by looking at the top results to figure out what exactly people are searching.
Get Clicks with a Compelling Title If ranking isn’t your motive and you want searchers to click into your webpage, then make your titles and descriptions as reliable as possible. Make your content shout “CLICK ME” in the search results.