What Is SEO – (Search Engine Optimization)?

In simple terms, SEO, which is short for Search Engine Optimization, is the process of enhancing your website to boost its visibility on popular search engines like Google, Microsoft Bing, and others. This optimization is crucial when people are searching for:

The products you offer.
The services you provide.
Information related to topics where you possess expertise or experience.

The primary aim of SEO is to improve your website’s ranking in search results. The better your visibility, the higher the chances of attracting and engaging potential customers, clients, or a recurring audience.

What You’ll Discover in This Guide:

The Distinction Between SEO, SEM, and PPC
The Significance of SEO
Various Types and Specializations of SEO
How SEO Functions
How to Acquire SEO Knowledge

Differentiating SEO, SEM, and PPC:

When it comes to search marketing, you’ll often encounter terms like SEM (Search Engine Marketing) and PPC (Pay-Per-Click). Here’s a brief breakdown of these terms and their relation to SEO:

SEO vs. SEM:

SEM, or search engine marketing, is a category of digital marketing that encompasses both SEO and PPC activities. It aims to drive traffic through both organic (SEO) and paid (PPC) search efforts. Essentially, SEO is one component of SEM:

SEO = Attracting organic traffic from search engines.
SEM = Attracting organic and paid traffic from search engines.

While SEM can sometimes be used interchangeably with PPC, it’s crucial to remember that SEO is a part of the broader SEM landscape.

SEO vs. PPC:

PPC, or pay-per-click, is a digital marketing method in which advertisers pay when users click on their ads. Advertisers bid on specific keywords or phrases, and their ads appear prominently in search results when relevant queries are made. To simplify:

SEO = Unpaid methods to improve search engine visibility.
PPC = Paid advertising based on keyword bids.

These two, SEO and PPC, are complementary facets of search marketing. The choice between them should depend on your budget and goals.

It’s important to note that while the industry sometimes uses SEM to mean PPC, here at Search Engine Land, SEM refers to both organic SEO and paid PPC.

In essence, SEO, SEM, and PPC form a trio of strategies to optimize your online presence and attract a broader audience.”

Why SEO Holds Significant Importance?

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, stands as a pivotal avenue within the realm of marketing. To underscore its importance, consider these compelling facts:

Organic search alone accounts for a substantial 53% of all website traffic. This statistic alone underscores its significance.
Projections indicate that the global SEO industry is on a trajectory to reach an astounding $122.11 billion by 2028. This immense growth reflects the tangible results that SEO delivers for a diverse spectrum of brands, businesses, and organizations, regardless of their scale.
When individuals embark on a journey to go somewhere, make a decision, seek information, conduct research, or make a purchase, their voyage typically commences with a search. However, the landscape of search has evolved into a multifaceted arena. Users may conduct searches on traditional web search engines such as Google and Microsoft Bing, on social platforms like YouTube and TikTok, or within retailer websites like Amazon.
It’s noteworthy that a significant portion of online shoppers in the U.S., 61% to be precise, initiate their product searches on Amazon, surpassing the 49% who initiate their searches on a traditional search engine like Google. Other notable platforms where searches begin include Walmart.com, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

With trillions of searches conducted annually, it’s evident that search serves as a primary traffic source for websites. This underscores the imperative of ensuring that your brand or business is “search engine friendly” across all platforms where people may search for you.

In essence, enhancing your visibility and securing higher rankings in search results compared to your competitors can substantially bolster your bottom line.

Moreover, SEO holds immense significance due to the fierce competition within the search engine results pages (SERPs), which are replete with various search features and pay-per-click (PPC) ads. These SERP features encompass knowledge panels, featured snippets, maps, images, videos, top news stories, ‘People Also Ask’ sections, and carousels.

Another compelling facet of SEO is its sustainability. In contrast to other marketing channels, effective SEO work endures. When a paid advertising campaign concludes, so does the traffic it generates. Similarly, traffic from social media platforms can be unreliable and has dwindled in comparison to its past performance.

Ultimately, SEO serves as the bedrock of holistic marketing, where every facet of your company’s operations carries significance. Once you discern the desires of your users, you can employ this knowledge across your marketing campaigns (both paid and organic), website content, and social media assets.

SEO functions as the conduit that drives the traffic essential for achieving crucial business objectives such as conversions, visits, and sales. Furthermore, it engenders trust, as a website that ranks favorably is often perceived as authoritative and trustworthy—qualities that Google rewards with improved rankings.

Different Types of SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) encompasses three distinct dimensions, each serving a vital role in the digital landscape:

Technical SEO: This facet involves optimizing the technical underpinnings of a website. It focuses on refining the website’s technical infrastructure to make it search engine-friendly. Key elements of technical SEO include URL structure, site navigation, internal linking, and various technical aspects that ensure seamless crawling and indexing by search engines.
On-site SEO: On-site SEO centers on enhancing the content present on a website to cater to both human users and search engine algorithms. The objective is to create and maintain high-quality, user-friendly content. On-site optimization includes aspects like covering relevant topics, integrating appropriate keywords, ensuring content uniqueness, maintaining top-notch writing standards, updating information, incorporating multimedia elements, and structuring content for readability. It also involves optimizing meta elements like title tags, meta descriptions, header tags, and image alt text.
Off-site SEO: While technical and on-site SEO offer full control over content and technical aspects, off-site SEO ventures into the realm of external factors that indirectly influence search engine visibility. It encompasses activities aimed at creating brand assets such as people, brand marks, core values, vision, slogans, catchphrases, and brand colors. Furthermore, off-site SEO strategies involve actions that bolster brand recognition, trustworthiness, and authority in the eyes of both users and search engines. These activities include demonstrating expertise, growing authority, and generating demand for the brand. It’s important to note that off-site SEO, unlike technical and on-site optimization, involves elements that may not always be entirely controllable, such as external links and platform changes.

In essence, SEO can be likened to a sports team, where success demands a balanced combination of offense and defense, accompanied by a devoted fan following (i.e., audience engagement). Technical optimization represents your defense, ensuring a solid foundation. Content optimization serves as your offense, driving user engagement and satisfaction. Off-site optimization acts as the means to attract, captivate, and retain a loyal audience, akin to passionate sports fans.

Technical Optimization

Technical optimization forms the bedrock of SEO success, representing a critical and fundamental aspect of the process.

It all begins with the architectural design of your website, a foundational step in ensuring it’s accessible and indexable by search engines. To quote Gary Illyes, Google’s trends analyst, in a Reddit AMA, the mantra is clear: ‘MAKE THAT SITE CRAWLABLE.’ The objective is to simplify the discovery and access of all your webpage content by search engines, including text, images, and videos. Key technical elements to consider include URL structure, site navigation, internal linking, and more.

Moreover, the user experience holds a pivotal role in technical optimization. Search engines prioritize pages that load swiftly and deliver an exceptional user experience. Aspects such as Core Web Vitals, mobile-friendliness, usability, HTTPS adoption, and the avoidance of intrusive interstitials all wield significance in the realm of technical SEO.

Structured data, often referred to as schema markup, represents another dimension of technical optimization. Incorporating this code into your website aids search engines in comprehending your content more effectively, consequently enhancing your visibility in search results.

Additionally, web hosting services, content management systems (CMS), and robust site security measures all contribute to the holistic landscape of SEO.

Content optimization

In the realm of SEO, your content must cater to two primary audiences: human readers and search engine algorithms. This implies the need to optimize not only the visible content on your webpage but also the underlying code.

The ultimate objective always remains consistent: to publish valuable and top-quality content. Achieving this goal involves a multifaceted approach, combining an understanding of your audience’s preferences and needs with insights and guidance provided by Google.

When optimizing content for human readers, it’s essential to ensure that:

It addresses relevant topics within your domain of experience or expertise.
It incorporates keywords that align with the phrases people commonly use to discover such content.
It boasts uniqueness and originality, setting it apart from similar content.
It is well-crafted, devoid of grammatical and spelling errors.
It remains up-to-date, offering accurate and current information.
It includes multimedia elements like images and videos to enhance engagement.
It outperforms competitors within the search engine results pages (SERPs).
It is reader-friendly, employing structural elements like subheadings, appropriate paragraph lengths, bolding and italics for emphasis, organized lists, and a suitable reading level, all contributing to ease of comprehension.

For search engines, the following key content elements warrant optimization:

Title tags
Meta descriptions
Header tags (H1-H6)
Image alt text
Metadata for platforms such as Open Graph and Twitter Cards

Balancing the optimization for both human users and search engines is pivotal for SEO success.

SEO specialties

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) encompasses various specialized branches, each distinct from standard SEO and demanding unique tactics and strategies. These niche areas pose specific challenges and opportunities:

Ecommerce SEO: Ecommerce SEO goes beyond conventional SEO by focusing on optimizing online stores. It entails enhancing category pages, product pages, faceted navigation, internal linking structures, product images, customer reviews, schema markup, and more to drive online retail success.

Enterprise SEO: Enterprise SEO is SEO at an extensive scale, often involving websites with over a million pages or enterprises generating millions or billions in annual revenue. This specialization includes managing complex SEO implementations, dealing with potential delays in executing SEO changes with development teams, and engaging multiple stakeholders.

International SEO: International SEO is tailored for global businesses seeking to optimize their online presence across multiregional or multilingual websites. This involves catering to international search engines such as Baidu or Naver, ensuring effective localization, and aligning strategies with diverse global audiences.

Local SEO: Local SEO aims to enhance visibility in local organic search results. It centers on managing and securing reviews, optimizing business listings, and employing location-based strategies to attract local customers.

News SEO: Speed and timeliness are paramount in News SEO, with a focus on rapid indexing by search engines and prominent placement in platforms like Google Discover, Google’s Top Stories, and Google News. Mastering best practices for paywalls, section pages, news-specific structured data, and other news-related elements is essential in this niche.

In summary, these SEO specialties offer distinct avenues for optimizing digital assets and catering to specific business needs.

How SEO Functions

If you arrived at this page via a Google search, it’s likely that you used search queries like ‘what is SEO’ or ‘SEO.’ This guide is hosted on Search Engine Land, a respected platform renowned for its extensive expertise and experience in the realm of SEO. We’ve been diligently covering all SEO developments, whether big or small, since 2006.

Originally published in 2010, our ‘what is SEO’ page has garnered an impressive 324,203 backlinks. In essence, these elements, among others, have contributed to the favorable reputation of this guide in the eyes of search engines, allowing it to consistently maintain the coveted Position 1 ranking for years. It has accumulated signals that establish its authority and trustworthiness, making it deserving of ranking highly when individuals search for information on SEO.

However, let’s delve into a broader perspective of how SEO operates. On the whole, SEO is an intricate interplay of the following components:

People: This refers to the individuals or teams responsible for planning and executing strategic, tactical, and operational SEO tasks.
Processes: SEO is streamlined through well-defined processes that enhance efficiency in accomplishing various tasks.
Technology: The utilization of specialized platforms and tools is instrumental in optimizing websites for search engines.
Activities: The tangible outcomes of SEO efforts, including website enhancements and content optimizations, contribute to overall success.

Numerous other factors influence the mechanics of SEO. Below, we provide an overview of the most crucial knowledge and procedural elements:

Grasping the Mechanisms of Search Engines

In its simplest form, if you wish for potential customers to discover your business through search, regardless of the platform, it’s imperative to comprehend the technical intricacies that govern how these engines operate. Subsequently, you must ensure that you provide all the requisite ‘signals’ to influence your online visibility.

When discussing traditional web search engines like Google, the search process unfolds in four distinct stages:

Crawling: Search engines employ web crawlers to unearth web pages, traversing through links and referencing sitemaps.
Rendering: These engines create a representation of how a page will appear using information from HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.
Indexing: Content and metadata from the discovered pages are scrutinized and cataloged in a database, although not every page from your website may be indexed.
Ranking: Complex algorithms evaluate numerous signals to determine a page’s relevance and quality, deciding whether it should appear in search results when users enter a query.

Nonetheless, optimizing for Google search differs from optimizing for other platforms like YouTube or Amazon. For instance, on Facebook, factors such as engagement metrics (likes, comments, shares) and social connections wield significant influence. Meanwhile, Twitter emphasizes signals like recency, interactions, and the credibility of the author.

Adding to the complexity, search engines have integrated machine learning elements, further complicating the assessment of cause-and-effect relationships in performance. Consequently, it becomes increasingly challenging to attribute better or worse outcomes to specific actions or strategies.

Conducting Research

Research plays a pivotal role in the realm of SEO, serving as a foundational element for improving performance. Several forms of research can significantly enhance your SEO endeavors:

Audience Research: Gaining insights into your target audience or market is essential. Delve into their demographics, psychographics, pain points, and questions that you can address effectively.
Keyword Research: This process involves identifying and integrating relevant and valuable search terms utilized by users into your webpages. It also helps gauge the demand and competition associated with these keywords.
Competitor Research: Analyzing your competitors is crucial. Assess their strengths, weaknesses, and the types of content they are producing to stay informed about industry trends.
Brand/Business/Client Research: Understanding the objectives of your brand, business, or clients is vital. Recognize their goals and determine how SEO can contribute to achieving those objectives.
Website Research: Various SEO audits can uncover opportunities and challenges hindering success in organic search. Consider conducting audits in areas such as technical SEO, content quality, link profile, and E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness).
SERP Analysis: Analyzing the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) helps in deciphering the search intent behind specific queries. This insight allows you to craft content that is more likely to secure rankings and visibility, aligning with the user’s search intent (e.g., commercial, transactional, informational, or navigational).”

These research efforts collectively contribute to a well-informed and effective SEO strategy.

Planning

An SEO strategy is your long-term action plan. You need to set goals – and a plan for how you will reach them.

Think of it your SEO strategy as a roadmap. The path you take likely will change and evolve over time – but the destination should remain clear and unchanged.

Your SEO plan may include things such as:

Setting goals (e.g., OKRs, SMART) and expectations (i.e., timelines/milestones).
Defining and aligning meaningful KPIs and metrics.
Deciding how projects will be created and implemented (internal, external or a mix).
Coordinating and communicating with internal and external stakeholders.
Choosing and implementing tools/technology.
Hiring, training and structuring a team.
Setting a budget.
Measuring and reporting on results.
Documenting the strategy and process.

Creating and implementing

After completing the research phase, it’s time to translate ideas into practical actions. This involves:

Generating Fresh Content: Providing guidance to your content team on the creation of new and relevant content that aligns with your SEO objectives.
Suggesting or Implementing Revisions and Enhancements: This may encompass updating and enhancing existing pages, enriching content quality, integrating internal links, infusing keywords/topics/entities, or identifying other avenues for optimization.
Pruning Obsolete or Low-Quality Content: Identifying and removing content that no longer serves a purpose, such as outdated or underperforming pages that don’t contribute to your SEO goals.”

By implementing these steps, you bring your SEO strategy to life, ensuring that it remains dynamic and responsive to the evolving digital landscape.

Monitoring and maintaining

You need to know when something goes wrong or breaks on your website. Monitoring is critical.

You need to know if traffic drops to a critical page, pages become slow, unresponsive or fall out of the index, your entire website goes offline, links break, or any other number of potential catastrophic issues.

Evaluating, Assessing, and Presenting Performance

In the realm of SEO, measurement is the cornerstone of improvement. To make informed decisions based on data, you must employ the following:

Website Analytics: Implement and utilize tools, including essential options like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Bing Webmaster Tools, to gather comprehensive performance data.

Tools and Platforms: While there are ‘all-in-one’ platforms that offer a suite of tools, you can also opt for specific SEO tools tailored to monitor performance in distinct areas. Alternatively, if your resources allow, you can even develop customized tools to fulfill specific requirements.

Once you’ve collected the data, the next step is reporting. Reports can be generated using dedicated software or through manual compilation.

Effective performance reporting should narrate a compelling story and occur at meaningful intervals. Typically, this entails comparisons with previous reporting periods, such as year-over-year analyses. The frequency of reporting will vary depending on the website’s nature, typically aligning with monthly, quarterly, or other relevant intervals.

SEO never ends

Search engines, user behavior and your competitors are always changing. Websites change and move (and break) over time. Content gets stale. Your processes should improve and become more efficient.

Bottom line: There’s always something you can be monitoring, testing or improving