What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
whats is search engine optimization and how does SEO work exactly? Where should you start if you want to understand how SEO works?
When I build websites or blogs for my clients, they usually don’t have any idea about what SEO is. The question I hear every time is:
“what is search engine optimization good for?”
So, I start at the very basics: I explain the importance of search engines first.
Why are search engines important for your blog?
For most people, Google represents pretty much all search engines.
Of course, there are plenty of others out there, but Google has a whopping market share of 92% worldwide.
So, it’s no wonder most bloggers focus solely on SEO on Google. However, that means there’s less SEO-based competition on other search engines. That’s something you should keep in mind for the future.
With so many people using Google, it’s obvious you want to achieve a high position in its search results.
The more people see your website in the search results, the more clicks and traffic you can get. Thus, good Google rankings mean better chances of making money with your blog.
The best part?
Organic traffic from Google is 100% free.
What does SEO stand for?
Once you grasp the massive traffic potential through search engines, you feel more motivated to learn what SEO is all about, right?
At least that’s how my clients feel. Every time. They see the incredible traffic (and turnover) potential SEO represents.
But what does SEO stand for?
In short: SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.
Simply put, that means using different optimization tactics to achieve a higher position in search results for a given keyword.
Obviously, the first links in the search results get the most clicks. So your goal is to be at least in the top five. Otherwise, you could end up getting no traffic at all for that specific keyword.
I’m sure you know there are heaps of different ways to improve search engine rankings. Depending on who you ask, you’ll hear different answers to SEO best practices and SEO tips for bloggers.
If you’re new to blogging and SEO, things can quickly feel overwhelming and technical.
To make things easier for you, let me walk you through how Google works before we dive into more practical SEO tips.
How does Google work?
Don’t be scared! I know it can feel confusing to try to understand how Google works exactly. But don’t worry, we’ll just look at a couple of fundamental ideas here.
You see, in order to know how you can achieve your SEO goals, you MUST understand what Google wants.
Luckily, Google is friendly enough to share with us their exact mission. Google wants to:
“Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
In other words, all Google wants to do is to:
- Gather all the information available online and
- Deliver users the most useful, valuable content for each search query.
What does this mean for you as a blogger?
Simply put, your SEO goal is to be the best possible search result for your potential readers. “The best” meaning the most valuable, helpful, and useful.
But with thousands of blogs and websites out there, how does Google know which ones are the best?
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