SEO basics start with understanding the concept. SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It’s the practice of boosting both the quality and quantity of website traffic and exposure to your brand through non-paid search engine results.
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SEO Basics: Search Engine
Search engines do all this by finding and cataloging all available content on the Internet. This happens via a process recognized as “crawling and indexing”. Then ordering it by how well it matches the query in a method we guide to as “ranking.” In the next chapter, we’ll cover crawling, indexing, and ranking in more detail.
Which Search Results Are “Organic”?
Organic search results are direct to those earned through beneficial SEO, not paid for (i.e., not advertising). These used to be straightforward to spot. The ads were clearly marked as such, and the remaining results commonly took the form of “10 blue links” listed below them. But with the way search has alerted, how can we spot organic results today?
Today, search engine results pages are filled with more advertising and active organic results formats than we’ve seen before.
It’s essential to remember that search engines make money from advertising. Their goal is better to solve searchers’ queries (within SERPs), keep searchers coming back, and keep them on the SERPs longer.
Some SERP traits on Google are organic and can be affected by SEO. These contain featured snippets (an advanced organic result that displays an answer inside a box) and related questions.
Why Learning SEO Basics Is Essential?
Organic search results wrap more digital real estate, seem more reasonable to savvy searchers, and receive more clicks than paid advertisements. For instance, of all US searches, only ~2.8% of people click on paid advertisements.
Therefore, SEO has ~20X more traffic opportunities than PPC on mobile and desktop.
SEO is one of the only online marketing channels that, when set up properly, can resume paying dividends over time. Your traffic may snowball over time if you deliver vital content that deserves to rank for the correct keywords. In contrast, advertising requires an ongoing budget to send traffic to your website.
Optimizing your site will help provide better information to search engines so that your content can be appropriately indexed and displayed within search results.
SEO Basics: Keyword Research & Keyword Targeting
The first step in search engine optimization is choosing what you’re optimizing for. This means specifying the terms people are looking for that you want your website to rank in search engines such as Google.
Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. There are a few key elements every digital marketing agency takes into account when choosing keywords:
Search Volume
The first element to consider in SEO basics is how many people (if any) are looking for a selected keyword. The more people there are looking for a keyword, the greater the audience you reach. Contrarily, if no one is searching for a keyword, there is no audience available to discover your content through search.
Relevance
If a term is frequently looked for, that’s great: but what if it’s irrelevant to your prospects? Relevance seems straightforward at first: if you’re selling enterprise email marketing automation software, you don’t desire to show up for searches that don’t relate to your business, like pet supplies. But what about terms such as “email marketing software”? This might intuitively seem like a fantastic description of what you do. Still, suppose you’re selling to Fortune 100 companies.
In that case, most of the traffic for this very competitive term will be searchers who aren’t interested in buying your software (and the folks you want to reach might never purchase your expensive, complex solution according to a simple Google search). Conversely, you may think a tangential keyword such as “best enterprise PPC marketing solutions” is irrelevant to your business as you don’t sell PPC marketing software. If your competitor is a CMO or marketing director, getting in front of them with a helpful resource on evaluating pay-per-click tools could be a great “first touch” and an excellent way to begin a relationship with a prospective buyer. Understanding the concept of relativity is among the most important parts of SEO basics.
Competition
As with any business prospect in SEO, you want to consider the potential costs and likelihood of success. This means understanding the comparative competition (and a chance to rank) for specific terms for SEO.
First, you need to understand your prospective customers and what they’re looking for. Thinking about that is an excellent place to start for your public business and SEO if you don’t already understand who your competitors are. After that, you can easily drive more traffic to your blog.
Final Thoughts About SEO Basics
All in all, knowing your audience’s goal is one side of the SEO coin, providing it in a way search engine crawlers can discover and understand is the other. Learning this can help everyone in a way. If you own a business, it will cut expenses on digital marketing services. If you’re seeking a job, it can get you into an SEO agency.
