SEO for Dummies | Clarifying the Basics

Does SEO confuse you with it’s complexity? Does mastering it sound like an impossible task? Perhaps all you need is a better understanding of how the whole system works.

Search Engines

What is a Search Engine?

First of all, a search engine is basically a big data base (called the index), just like a library. In this library, when you submit a search, the search engine bots collect information that matches your query. Think of this like a librarian finding books for you. Finally, the algorithm ranks the results order. This is similar to a librarian putting books on the top of the stack that he/she thinks you would like the most.

How do I get My Website Indexed?

You can either submit a sitemap to google (basically a list of links to all of your webpages and photo/video content) or have your website liked to from other sites. Following the library analogy, your either donate your book to the library or have it referenced by other books already in there.

Site Optimization

Okay, so now you’re in. But how do you get your website to rank high enough that people will see it? Or in the library analogy, how do you get it on the display shelf? Well, there are a few different ways to do this.

Keyword Optimization

First, you can optimize keywords. By using keyword tracker tools, you can discover which keywords are highly competitive and which ones are for the taking. Think about it this way… if there are a lot of fantasy books in the library about dragons, you would have a lot of competition in reaching a reader. However, if you wrote a fantasy book about iguanas (which isn’t that common), your book would stand out and someone would have a higher chance of trying it. While the dragon books are more popular, the iguana book would have a higher rate of people trying it because of a lack of competition.

On-page Optimization

Another way to get your website ranked higher is On-page Optimization. For example, with the library analogy, let’s say people want to read about Native American legends in stories. If you were writing a book on this, you might want to include the phrase “Native American legends” somewhere in the inside of the cover blurb. Including Native American art elements into the cover might help too. What I’m trying to get at is that you want to optimize your content, structure, and wording to satisfy specific search intents. Instead of trying to please everyone and satisfying no one, you need to choose what audience you are catering to and build your site around that (make sure to use keywords).

Link building

Another way to get traffic onto your site is link building. Basically, you want to get as many websites as possible to have your website link in their site. For the library analogy, think of books referencing one another. However, you want to make sure to get links from high quality because bad sites can bring your reputation down. For example, if you are a breakfast diner, links from websites like Bob Evans would be beneficial. However, you don’t want a link from the website of that sketchy pub in the bad side of town.

Technical SEO

Finally, there are a few things that greatly improve SEO from the technical side. First of all, Google has to know that your page exists. An easy way to do that is to submit your sitemap to Google. Secondly, Google needs permission to crawl and index your page. Crawling is where a search engine bot skims through your website to see if it matches the search query. Indexing the page means that Google wants to download your website to it’s data base so that it can crawl it whenever a relevant search is made.

Resources

If you would like to learn more about how to effectively use SEO, here is the expanded source page for what you just read: How to Learn SEO (Complete Roadmap) (ahrefs.com)

Also, here is a resource to help you understand sitemaps: Types of Sitemaps – ENTR 330 SEO Blog (gccwebsites.com)