What is SEO?

Search engine optimization is known as SEO. Increasing a company’s visibility in organic search ​results is the aim of SEO.

Consequently, these endeavors increase the number of people who visit the business’ website, ​raising the possibility of more conversions, which brings in more clients and income.

Whenever I’m asked to define SEO, I usually say that it’s a way to make sure that people find ​your website when they Google your product or service category.

However, this oversimplifies the discipline.

Your site pages can be optimized for search engines in a variety of ways. Title tags, keywords, ​image tags, internal link structure, and inbound links—also referred to as backlinks—are among ​the components that search engines scan for.

To decide how highly ranked your site should be in their SERPs, search engines also consider ​other external, off-site factors, visitor behavior, and site structure and design.

After accounting for all of these variables, SEO mainly influences rankings and visibility.

Before we go any further, though, let me warn you that a lot of resources make SEO seem very ​complicated and may even scare you off. This guide isn’t like that, I swear. I’ll dissect SEO into ​its most fundamental components and demonstrate how to use each one to develop a fruitful ​SEO strategy of your own.

How does Google determine a ​page’s ranking?

Search engines only have one objective. Their goal is to give users the most pertinent information or ​answers.

Their algorithms select the pages that are most pertinent to your query each time you use them. Next, ​order them so that the most reputable or well-liked ones appear first.

In order to provide users with relevant content, search engines consider four primary elements:

The meaning of a searcher’s query, which is most likely the reason they are searching, and how that ​meaning aligns with the most relevant content.

• Relevancy is the degree to which a search query and the content on a page are relevant; search ​engines evaluate this using a variety of criteria, such as keywords or topic.
• Quality of content: based on signals like expertise, authority, and trustworthiness, the E-E-A-T ​(which we’ll talk about later) model surfaces the content that appears to be the most helpful.
• The usability of a website takes into account elements like mobile friendliness, page speed, and ​other aspects that affect how simple it is to find content on a website.
• Context, which depends on the searcher’s previous actions and configurations such as location.

And they employ advanced formulas known as search algorithms to examine all of this data.

Search engines don’t divulge their algorithms. However, SEOs have discovered some of the elements ​they take into account when ranking a page over time. They are the center of an SEO strategy and are ​referred to as ranking factors.

Determining authority and relevance can be greatly aided by using the E-E-A-T framework. In SEO, the ​letters E-E-A-T stand for “expertise,” “experience,” “authoritativeness,” and “trustworthiness.” The ​following are the definitions of each:

• Expertise: You are an authority on the subject.
• Experience: The subject matter you write about is something you personally know.
• Authority: When other websites link to your website and attest to your credibility, you are perceived ​by others as an authoritative source.
• Trustworthiness: The information on your website is up to date and believable.

Professionals who answered our Web Traffic & Analytics survey indicated that authority and experience ​were the next most important ranking factors for appearing in SERPs, after trustworthiness and ​expertise.

Expertise and experience will be more crucial for content creators hoping to differentiate themselves ​from AI-generated content as AI takes up more and more of the search mix. This is because algorithms ​lack the knowledge necessary to form original thoughts or the same degree of personality as a human ​expert.

Additionally, even though they aren’t direct ranking factors, they can still enhance your SEO content, ​which may have an effect on them. In fact, according to 65% of SEOs, Google’s 2023 algorithm update​—which featured an updated E-E-A-T framework—had a favorable effect.

You’ll soon see that your rankings and search visibility can be impacted by increasing the amount of ​content you write, improving internal links, or optimizing image filenames. And the reason for that is that ​every one of those acts raises a ranking factor.