What is SEO and How it Works

Before I start to write about regular content in SEO for beginners, I would like to tell you all, that I will try to explain this SEO step by step guide in an easy language. OK! You have seen a lot of blogs and millions of articles been published everyday online! And

According to Torque, 27% of the Entire Internet is powered by WordPress. So, if you are a SEO beginner and want to start a blog then try to choose WordPress. WordPress is user-friendly for a blogger who doesn’t have tech skills to develop a website.

What is SEO Marketing?

I know, I don’t need to tell this ‘SEO means Search Engine Optimisation’ as this is a basic abbreviation. But when this is a basic SEO step by step guide, so I prefer to talks basics first wrt SEO Marketing.

Also, according to Wikipedia SEO Definition is, ‘ Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the online visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine’s unpaid results—often referred to as “natural”, “organic”, or “earned” results.’

SEO is a practice through which websites rank to the search terms or keywords organically. In simple terms, you create your content to impress Search Engine.

Here impressing Search Engine means, helping the search engine to show your content as best result for a particular keyword or search term and that too organically. And organically means without any paid ads.

So, how these websites get ranked for that search term’? Come, let’s explore the secret behind this with very basics of SEO!

Well, it’s an art which results are highly dependent on the website structure and content with proper placement of keywords. The effort you put to learn this art will be worth it. Let’s not stop and proceed further.

Take whatever niche you want to explore, and type any ‘search term’ like ‘best travel website’ or ‘travel website’, you will find tonnes of posts related to that search term or keyword in the search engine.( Search Engine: Google, Bing, and Yahoo)

Now everyone writes about it, but there are only 10 search results which come on 1st SERP ( Search Engine Results Page). And being in top 5 matters the most for conversion.

Coming to SEO it is in-between you, search engine and searcher. These three are proportional to each other.

Placement of keywords the most without hurting the flow of the content. It means with one arrow (content), you will aim for both Search engine and Searcher.

How SEO Works

Whatever I or you type ( or speak) in the search engines like Google, Baidu, Bing, and Yahoo etc., it pulls out a list of web pages related to that query. And the reason behind pulling such related links is magical.

All search engines ( 74.28% of searchers mostly use Google as their search engine)  have crawlers which crawl to gather all the information available on the internet. To build an index, crawlers bring that information to the search engine.

And with the help of an algorithm which is fed through the indexed information try to match the query we put in the search box of any Search Engine. And according to Rand Fishkin, there are a lot of factors that are considered in search engine algorithm, check here.

Before, concluding ‘how SEO works, I would like to give a simple example that can help you understand the ‘O’ in SEO. This ‘O’ means Optimization, and here you, me or any other publisher write the content and drape it well to publish with keywords by using them in title and meta description. Structure it well with internal and external links.

How Much Keyword Repetition Is Optimal

Many renowned blogs suggest the usage of keyword density or keyword repetition in between 1-3%. That means if your website is related to Movers, and you are writing an article about a ‘Local Movers’, then for 1000 words, you can use Local Movers for 10 times which means 1%.

According to Long Tail Pro,  nobody knows exact keyword density percentage. So, it’s always suggestable to write high-quality content instead of thinking about keyword stuffing.

Once the article is ready, try to naturally put the keywords. And it is suggested to use of Semantic keywords or related keywords and related phrases, instead of repeating the same keyword.

Semantic Keyword means, for Social Media Marketing the Semantic or related keyword is Facebook Advertising or Instagram Advertising.

White Hat vs Black Hat

It depends, whether you are in the market for the long term or you are here to make some quick bucks. If you are in the market to make some quick bucks and then like to fade away, then you don’t need to read further.

If you are an SEO consultant and giving services, then usage of black hat SEO tricks will ruin your reputation in the market. Better to not to use such tricks for personal or to the clients.

Whereas white hat SEO techniques help to sustain the business for a long time. The audience will appreciate your website and Search Engine will be happy.

Black Hat SEO

This approach deceives search engines to improve rankings drastically. Deceiving Search Engine means using tricks which are against search engine guidelines. Following are the list of Black Hat SEO techniques:

• Keyword Stuffing throughout the website.
• Duplicate Content.
• Cloaking.
• Links from websites which aren’t related to your niche.

Black hat tricks result in spam pages which gets banned in no time.

White Hat SEO

This approach is acceptable by search engines which will help your website to improve ranks gradually. And this technique is built on search engine guidelines. Following are the White Hat SEO techniques:

• Niche Relevant Content.
• Content with proper Spellings and Grammar.
• Following Content to Keyword Density Ratio.
• Images with proper lable.
• Links from the relevant website.
• Relevant page title with Uniqueness.

If above mentioned simple White Hat SEO techniques used properly, then gradually you can find improvement in overall rankings.

White Hat SEO is a time-consuming process, but this method is most acceptable for the greater good.

Unfortunately, it’s not easy to rank in this web world, where the competition is too heavy. And as the Google Standards contradict the regular practices, the Gray Hat SEO is more into the market nowadays.

Here, Grey Hat means not trying to trick anyone, but you try to get an advantage with unique techniques. Learn here through Neil Patel about Grey Hat SEO.

Difference Between On-Page SEO vs Off-Page SEO

With On Page SEO, you actually optimize the website to make it search engine friendly. This optimization relates with Google’s Ranking Factors with the following important techniques:

Content: If the competition is heavy, and everyone is writing about the same topic then the unique content provider stands different in the market.

Keyword Optimization: Selection of better keywords plays a vital role in the marketing strategy. There are free keyword research tools, which helps you choose a wide range of keywords.

Choosing a high search volume keyword is good, but considering the competition related to that, choosing a related phrase and semantic keyword helps your content to get better results.

Title Optimization: This is the most important factor of On-Page SEO. According to Moz, Google displays the first 50 – 60 characters. So, create title within 60 characters with a top keyword of your post to optimize it properly.

URL Structure: Presence of your top keyword in URL will be a best practice. If your previous doesn’t follow this practice, then don’t change them if there are too many. But try to implement this practice in the new ones.

Headings ( H1, H2, H3, H4, H5): On any content, headings are big words and search engine give them a good amount of importance. Try to use the keyword in the H1 for better optimization.

Making use of Headings means, you are structuring content in a better way for better readership. The better structured it is, the more people love to read, and the more time people stay on your website, the bounce time will be reduced to let search engine understand how authentic your website is related to that niche.

Meta Description Tag: Whether it’s homepage meta tag or posts meta tag, use of keyword is mandatory. If it’s related to home page, then make sure to mention products or services you provide. If it’s related to posts, then make sure you mention the main keyword in the meta.

According to Moz, meta tag description can be in between 50 to 300 characters. But keeping it in between 160 to 200 characters with keywords can be accounted as best practice.

Alt Text for Image: This is another best practice to implement keyword optimization technique. Either you can use the main keyword or the related keyword to help Search Engine understand better content.

Link Optimization: Relating pages to one another is called internal linking. For Example: If you are reading What is SEO, means you may even like to read ‘How to research keywords’. So, If I write content on keywords research, then I can create a related internal link.

Internal linking is essential to secure a better ranking in search engine. Also, it helps to reduce the bounce rate.

Off Page SEO

To promote your website with other channels Off-Page SEO techniques play a vital role. This method helps the website to improve its position in SERP ( Search Engine Results Page) by driving traffic through other websites by getting quality backlinks. This practice defines how popular is your website.

Social Media Marketing: People presence is huge in Social Media. In this way, attracting traffic will be effective and the ROI will be good. Creating a strong presence in social media makes the company or website popular and can drive niche oriented traffic.

Social Bookmarking: This practice involves posting links on a network like Digg, StumbleUpon etc., to generate traffic. You can do social bookmarking with articles, blogs, images, and videos.

Reach Out Influencers: Using Ahref’s you can find who all are linking with your competitor and you can reach them to link with your website or you can do guest blogging.

These are some of the basics in SEO step by step guide. If you are a beginner and want to ace in SEO world, start implementing these basics and see how it works.

Also, if you think I missed anything do let me know with your comments.