Search engine optimization is one of the most important concepts to understand if you have a website and want to grow it. Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t really know what it is, how it works, or even if it matters to them and their business. The truth is, a lot of website owners don’t “get” SEO because they don’t need to understand it in order to make a pretty website.
With so many website builders available today, anyone can create a beautiful website with lots of unique features and fancy graphics–but it’ll probably be devoid of content. The other issue is that someone might type their heart out and create lots of content for their website, only to realize that none of it can be found on Google!
So if you’re in this position, we’re going to help by simplifying SEO so that you can grow your website.
Understanding how search engines work
If you’re going to optimize your content for search engines, you need to understand how they work. Google uses something known as “crawling” to browse the web. They start off by visiting websites they know, and then they travel through various links until they reach new websites and pages. These are then indexed by Google and a lot of their data is recorded.
When new pages are discovered, they’re added to the directory and will be ranked based on the content that the crawlers detect. If the content is good (according to Google’s algorithms) then the page will be bumped up in the search engine. If it’s not good content and doesn’t follow Google’s preferences, then it won’t show up on a search result.
This is just a very basic explanation of how search engines work, but it’s essential to help you understand search engine optimization and how pages are added to Google in the first place.
Demystifying basic SEO concepts
So with that knowledge in mind, here are some basic concepts to learn:
- Keywords – Google will index entire websites and then use the content on your page to serve results to searchers. Think about how you personally search for things on Google. Most people use keywords, and these are references that Google will use to search through your content to see if it’s relevant to the searcher.
- Quality – But keywords alone won’t help you reach the front page of a search. You also need to make quality content–but how does Google know if it’s good or bad? Google uses algorithms that take things like user retention and authority into consideration when ranking your pages. If lots of people link to your pages and click your links, then it’s considered good content and will be pushed up the rankings.
- Organic – Google places a heavy emphasis on organic search, meaning that someone will discover what they’re looking for naturally without any advertisements. This means that you should be focusing on creating a good customer experience and journey instead of just relying on advertisements.
At the end of the day, SEO is a big and complicated subject, but it’s surprisingly simple once you grasp these simple concepts. In short, it’s all about providing valuable content to people and understanding what they’re looking for.