What Is SEO And How Does It Work:

{SEO For Beginners}

Have you started a blog, and made regular posts but haven’t been getting many visitors?

I’ve been there so I know the feeling.

Don’t give up, there is hope, you just need a new approach.

Try SEO! If you don’t know anything about SEO, don’t worry I’ve got you covered.

In This Post You’ll Learn:

  • what is SEO
  • Why is sEO important
  • How search engines work
  • how to get visitors to your site
what is seo

You’ve probably heard the term SEO a lot but are not sure exactly what it is or how it works.

Don’t feel bad. It was foreign to me too. Even after knowing about it, I did not understand it or knew how important it was.

Enough of me blabbing.

If you’re interested in learning ‘how to start SEO on a new blog‘, read that guide.

So

What Is SEO?

SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization.

Search engine optimization is the practice of organizing or rearranging content in a way that improves its chances of being discovered by search engines.

Optimizing your content allows you to be easily discovered on the search results page and get FREE TRAFFIC to your site.

There are many search engines that you can optimize your content for. Some of which are, YouTube, Pinterest, Amazon, etc.

SEO is important because it can

  • Give you lots of free traffic from all across the globe.
  • Increase brand awareness
  • Improve the quality and quantity of visitors that you get from search engines.
  • Attract targeted and local customers.
  • Build credibility and trust.

Let’s take a quick look at

How Search Engine Works

Each search engines use its own software program. They have 3 basic functions.

1. Crawling: Examine the content

2. Indexing: Categorize the content

3. Ranking: Determine which content is most relevant to the searcher

Crawling

Search engines use pc programs to make their way to the pages, these are called bots, spiders, and crawlers.

These bots crawl the internet to find/discover content.

Search engine bots hop from page to page following links to other pages in search of new links and new content to index.

Indexing

The index is a huge list of web pages found by bots. These web pages are what search engines use in response to a searcher’s query on the results page.

Pages make it into the index after the search engine determines what they’re about. They file them amongst other related pages.

Not everything on a site gets indexed.

Ranking

No one can say for sure how a search engine ranks content, however, we know that they use several different factors.

They rank content based on,

1. Search intent

2. Content relevance

3. Content freshness

4. Expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E.A.T). Get people to link to your content.

5. Usability factors such as page speed, mobile responsiveness

6. Location

The goal of search engines is to match the searcher’s query based on their keywords.

When a user types in a query, search engines crawl their library of indexed pages to find content that matches the searcher’s query.

To rank on search engines you must understand the meaning of a query and the type of information the user is looking for.

How To Get Visitors To Your Site

To get visitors to your website you’ll have to do

1. On-Page SEO

2. Off-Page SEO

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO is when you optimize the content and technical aspects of your site.

This includes the

  • Html code
  • Meta tags
  • Schema markups

On-page SEO focuses mainly on topical relevance.

Once you know the topic you want to publish on your site you can use SEO tools such as Ubersuggest, Moz, and Google keyword planner to help you discover popular search terms related to your topic.

After you’ve found the search terms you can then add them to your posts.

You’d start your post off in an engaging way and then naturally include your keywords.

You should optimize your URL, meta, header, title, and alt tags. Read the detailed guide about on-page SEO to learn more.

You should also add images, videos, and other things to make your content more engaging and increase credibility.

Once you’ve completed the on-page SEO aspect of your site you should then move on to optimizing the off-page aspect.

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO on the other hand is when you do things outside of your site to help increase its visibility.

This focuses primarily on link building.

To rank on search results you need to get quality links from other people by doing outreach.

For outreach to work you need

1. To identify people interested in your content

2. A good reason to contact them

3. To state the benefit they’ll receive by linking to your content

Optimizing off-site will improve your site’s

1. Popularity

2. Relevance

3. Trustworthiness

4. Authority

Off-page SEO is possible with the use of

1. Backlinks from authoritative sites

2. Guest blogging

3. Brand mentions

4. Social media and Influencer marketing

For your content to reach a wide audience you’ll have to promote it on social media platforms, Q & A platforms, etc.

the wrap on sEO basics

To get your content to rank on search engines you need to learn and do on-page and off-page SEO.

You must understand keywords and searcher intent.

When it comes to off-page SEO outreach is very important. You have to do outreach to build relationships and get people to link back to your site.

Read the following guide if you want to learn ‘how to start SEO on a new blog‘.

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