Are you wondering how SEO works? There is a lot of information required to learn SEO. 

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the practice of content optimization to help it be discovered on the search engine’s organic search results.

The benefits of doing SEO are quite obvious. You can obtain free traffic to your website passively and continuously. This is also why a lot of people are looking to learn SEO.

Although it takes a long time to start ranking on the first page of search results (at least 3 months). It is worth it as a long term investment. Results have shown that the top 3 Google search results get 75% of all clicks and moving up just one position of the Google search results can increase your clickthrough rate by an average of 30.8%

There are 2 types of SEO:

• On-page
• Off-page

We will be diving into an overview of this to give you a basic understanding of how to do SEO and a guide on how to execute your SEO efforts. Since, in order to learn SEO, there are many details to know about and not everything can possibly be covered with one blog post.

How The Search Engines Works

Search engines are modern versions of a library but instead of storing books, they are storing web pages. To learn SEO, you must understand how the search engines work in finding a webpage to rank on its search results.

When you type a word into the search query, the search engine is able to look through all the pages within its index and show you all the relevant results. This process is called an algorithm.

In indexing a website and showing you the results, the search engine uses various factors to bring up a webpage that is most relevant to the users. According to Brian Dean, an “SEO genius” as called by entrepreneur.com, their search engine currency uses over 200 known factors in their algorithm in ranking a webpage. 

Although you do not have to remember all of the 200+ factors, it is good to know what factors you can use on your website. Ideally, creating your own simple WordPress website and experimenting around will really help you learn SEO much faster and more effectively.

Some of the most important ranking factors  are as follow (these are not in any particular order):

• Website dwell time
• Website loading speed
• Organic clickthrough rate
• Mobile usability

Tip: Google has over 92% of the worldwide search engine market share which is why it pays to optimize for Google over other search engines such as Bing, or DuckDuckGo.

Keywords?

Keywords are usually a huge part of SEO. 

Although we are not looking for ‘keywords’ exactly but usually the search queries. SEO specialists will look for a combination of words that people would search for on certain topics. Keywords that they are concerned with are usually the combination of words that express a problem or question. This is for the sake of catering content to an audience which brings us to our next point.

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO has to do a lot with ranking factors that are within a page. This includes both the technical side as well as the content side of webpages. To learn SEO, you need to understand the various factors that you can implement on a webpage that will help Google index it easier.

Technical SEO

• Site speed – make sure your website loads quickly. One of the ways to do this is to make sure that your website image files are not too big.
• Mobile-friendliness – Your website should have a responsive design that supports all devices.
• Code quality – The coding of your website should be clean and clear for Google to understand the content of your website effectively. 
• Security – Your website should be secure

SEO Content Optimization

• Titles – The ‘meta-title’ and the heading of a content should have your chosen focus keyword as these are critical ranking signals that Google used in its algorithm
• Content – The copy of your content should bring benefits to the readers and answers to question that is often searched for in the search query, usually it should be content that answers questions or solves a problem. Your content should also be filled with images, videos, and other engaging content because Google wants its users to have better interaction with its ranked websites.
• Internal linking – Internal linking will help Google identify which content is the most important one on your site. Internal linking will also help Google discover all the pages on your site.
• Outbound links – Google uses links that refer to another website in order to check the accuracy of the information and credibility of the author.

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO includes the signals that are not related to factors on the webpages you are trying to rank. It usually relies on third-party websites that links back to your webpages. Thus, increasing your website authority in Google’s eyes.

Inbound Links

These are the most significant contributing factor in off-page SEO. Another word for this is backlink. Creating a reliable backlink profile for your website will help Google see your website as more authoritative.

Some ways you can build backlinks are through guest blogging, and reaching out to related website owners, as well as collaborations.

Conclusion

There is a lot of information required to fully learn SEO and implement it on your own. Some useful tools that can help this process flow easier are Ahrefs and Ubersuggest. To recap, there are a total of 2 types of SEO: on-page and off-page. The goal of any SEO strategy is to help webpages rank on page 1 of Google’s search results. The most important thing to keep in mind when you learn SEO is that Google’s search engine favors websites that will provide the best experience for its users. 

If you’re looking for someone to help you with digital marketing, we are the one for you! Contact us today for a free consultation on the best digital marketing strategies you can implement in your business.