Over the past time, many people have heard the words SEO or Search
Engine Optimization. Many of them might see it as a somewhat complex thing,
which takes years to learn and master. But that's not true. You can learn
everything you need to know in just two months or even less!
To be precise, “Search Engine Optimization” is a way of satisfying site visitors with what they need and want. By following certain rules that are the basic points of search engine optimization, it is possible to make your website rank high amongst the other websites in your niche. Popular websites such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing pay visits to different websites day in and out. They have automatic systems that scan sites based on a set of algorithms and add them to their results pages or popularly known as search engine directories or search indexes.
Have you ever heard of SEO and wondered what it is? How hard is it to learn? In this blog post, we will answer all of these questions. Let's get started!
Table of content:
What is SEO?
How to learn SEO?
- Learn how search engines work
- Identify your top keywords
- Optimize your content
- Optimize your website or blog for mobile users
- Craft unique and compelling meta descriptions
- Make use of structured data and rich snippets
- Use internal linking
- Write SEO friendly URLs
- Takeaway: SEO is easier if you have a certain structure in place to learn it from.
What Does it Take to Learn SEO?
- A passion for search
- Obsessive attention to detail
- Good communication skills
- A flair for technical writing
- An ability to work alone
- A willingness to accept mistakes
- A good understanding of other languages
- An analytical mind
- Takeaway: These skills can be enhanced with some good online training and experience in the field.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.
To understand the true meaning of SEO, let's break that definition down and look at the parts:
Quality of traffic. You can attract all the visitors in the world, but if they're coming to your site because Google tells them you're a resource for Apple computers when really you're a farmer selling apples, that is not quality traffic. Instead, you want to attract visitors who are genuinely interested in the products that you offer.
Quantity of traffic. Once you have the right people clicking through from those search engine results pages (SERPs), more traffic is better.
Organic results. Ads make up a significant portion of many SERPs. Organic traffic is any traffic that you don't have to pay for.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's unpaid results—often referred to as "natural", "organic", or "earned" results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, and academic search.
As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, what people search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines, and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. Optimizing a website may involve editing its content and HTML and associated coding to both increases its relevance to specific keywords and remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Promoting a site to increase the number of backlinks, or inbound links is another SEO tactic. By May 2015, mobile search had surpassed desktop search. In 2015, it was reported that Google is developing and promoting mobile search as a key feature within future products.
How to Learn SEO?
Most people think that learning SEO takes too much time, which is why they never plan to do it. But while learning SEO may take a while, it doesn't have to be a years-long affair that requires you to quit your job, become a monk in the Himalayas and spend all of your time holed up in a dark room doing keyword research for your own site.
SEO is a huge topic and can be quite daunting for newcomers. It can take months to learn about what works in SEO by trial and error. However, the biggest problem is most people don't know where to start.
SEO is a topic that is constantly changing. What was working 6 months ago may not be working today. Therefore, it's important to stay on top of this ever-changing field by learning what new methods and trends are working today so you can implement them on your site.
- Learn how search engines work
When you enter a query in a search engine and hit 'enter' you get a list of web results that contain that query term. Users normally tend to visit websites that are at the top of this list as they perceive those to be more relevant to the query.
In short, they work by "surfing the internet" and looking for websites on which they can find content that matches particular keywords and phrases. They then display the results in a very specific order and rank them according to how closely those sites match what they want to see.
This ranking is based on a number of factors, but one of the most important has to do with the amount of time a site's content is indexed in search engines' databases. The more it's indexed, the higher it will appear in searches.
Google and other search engines don't reveal the algorithms they use to rank search results. That's because they're constantly tweaking them and don't want people to "game" the system.
There are, however, a few basic principles that underlie the science (or art) of SEO. They are:
Search engines read content online and index it by topic, using sophisticated text-matching techniques to determine which pages are most relevant to a user's search.
Search engines analyze how often certain keywords appear on a page and in what context — for example, whether they appear in headings or the body text.
Search engines also look at how many other pages link to a given page, as well as their quality. Links from high-quality sites tell search engines that your page is also high quality (or at least, it should be). It's like social proof: If everyone else thinks your website is great, it must be great!
When using a search engine, you will notice there are two types of results: organic and paid. Organic search results are listings on search engine result pages (SERPs) that appear because of their relevance to the searched term, as opposed to their being advertisements.
- Identify your top keywords
Choosing the right keywords is a delicate process that requires both creativity and a deep understanding of your target audience.
The best place to start is by mining your own brain. Think about what you would search for if you were looking for answers related to the article you’re writing. If there’s a term that comes to mind, add it to your list.
Next, check out Google Trends. This tool lets you compare the search volume of different keywords in locations around the world. It’s especially useful if you want to optimize your content for local searches.
Another option is to use Buzzsumo, which helps you find popular content related to your topic. You can also see how many social media shares each article has received, which can help you identify topics that might be worth writing about in the future.
It's easy to get wrapped up in keyword strategies and metrics, but remember that you're ultimately responsible for driving business results: leads, customers, revenue, etc. SEO is just one piece of the puzzle: a tactic that supports your broader marketing goals. There's no point in investing time or money into SEO if it isn't going to drive business results for you.
Keyword research should be the starting point for any SEO campaign. It's important to understand what keywords are being used by your target audience in order to develop relevant search queries.
- Optimize Your Content
Keywords are words or phrases that people type into search engines to find content. For example, if you were selling shoes, you might want to optimize for keywords like "men's sneakers" or "women's boots." To find out which keywords you should be targeting, use an SEO tool like Moz Keyword Explorer.
Most people are looking for information — not advertisements. For that reason, you can assume that people don't care about your company until they consider you an authoritative and trustworthy source of useful information.
Every page on your website should have a title, a subtitle, and so on. When search engines scan your website, they'll understand your content better if you explain to them the text hierarchy. The most relevant part is the title of your page and you should define it as H1 (in the Text's Editor). The H1 should be descriptive of the page's content and you shouldn't have more than one H1 per page. Choose carefully and don't forget to include your keywords. Following your H1, is H2, H3, and so on. The clearer your text structure is, the easier search engines will digest your site's content.
Remember the 2% Density? It's not just about writing for spiders, but for humans too! Keyword stuffing is an old SEO strategy that doesn't work anymore. Nowadays, Google penalizes websites whose contents are stuffed with keywords. Instead of repeating keywords in your text over and over again, try to use synonyms (or just write naturally).
- Optimize Your Website or Blog For Mobile Users
As of 2015, Google is now penalizing sites that aren't mobile-friendly. That means if your site isn't optimized for mobile, you will be losing out on a lot of potential visitors. Luckily, it's easy to see how visitors are accessing your site and make improvements as needed. The first thing you must do to improve your SEO is to start with a mobile-friendly website. Mobile-friendliness is a ranking factor in Google's search algorithm, and consumers are five times more likely to abandon a task on an unoptimized mobile site.
There are several ways for brands to improve their mobile search engine optimization. The first step is to make sure that information about your brand, products, and services is easy for mobile users to find. This can be accomplished by using a mobile-friendly or responsive website design to make these elements of your digital presence accessible on the smaller screens of smartphones and tablets.
In addition, optimizing images, using descriptive tags, creating a unique title for each page, and writing quality meta descriptions can also help your content appear in search results. Once you have created a mobile-friendly site, you can use Google's Mobile-Friendly Test to see if pages on your site are properly optimized for smartphone users.
To check whether your website is mobile-friendly, visit Google's Mobile-Friendly Test page.
- Craft unique and compelling meta descriptions
A meta description is a brief description of the content of a page. Search engines show this text in search results mainly when the searched-for phrase is within the description. Meta descriptions are important because Google might use them as snippets for your pages. Note that we say "might" because Google may choose to use a relevant section of your page's visible text if it does a good job of matching up with a user's query.
Because meta descriptions don’t play a direct role in SEO, you might be tempted to skip them entirely. However, the right meta description can entice people to click on your site, which is why it’s important to take the time to craft one for each page of your site.
The meta description is a snippet of up to about 155 characters - a tag in HTML - which summarizes a page's content. Search engines show the meta description in search results mostly when the searched-for phrase is within the description, so optimizing the meta description is crucial for on-page SEO.
- Create unique descriptions for every page
Don't just repeat the title in your description, as that will make it less compelling and less likely to be clicked on in the SERPs. Instead, get creative: think about what your target readers would want to know about this page and write it out.
- Make sure your descriptions are reasonably short
While Google doesn't have an official upper limit for meta descriptions (other than pixel width), they generally cut off snippets at 155 characters or so. For readable SEO copywriting, keep your meta descriptions to under 160 characters - but don't worry if you go over a bit in a few places. Aim more for clarity than brevity: write out what you want to say, then go back and trim the fat until it's concise without being confusing.
A great meta description should:
- Accurately describe the page's content
- Be short and sweet (under 155 characters)
- Entice a click-through from the SERP (search engine results page)
- Include keywords that match the user’s query
- Be able to stand alone without additional information
- Be fully written by you, not automatically generated by search engines
- Make use of structured data and rich snippets
There are a lot of techniques you can use to improve your marketing. However, there’s one strategy that is often overlooked.
Structured data and rich snippets may sound complex and technical, but they can make a huge difference in your website rankings and CTR (clickthrough rate).
What is structured data and rich snippets?
Structured data refers to information that has been organized so that it can be easily understood by search engines. It helps search engines understand what your website is about better, which means that it can deliver relevant results to people searching for specific keywords.
Rich snippets refer to the additional details that appear in the search engine results. This means that instead of just seeing the title of your article and its URL, users will also see an image from your site and some other information about it.
Structured data is a standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content; for example, on a recipe page, what are the ingredients, the cooking time and temperature, the calories, and so on.
The purpose of structured data is to help search engines better understand your content. From an SEO perspective, this helps Google display your site more prominently in search results.
In particular, rich snippets appear in search results when they’re relevant to the search query — they increase click-through rate because they attract more attention.
For example, if you have a product catalog site, you can make use of structured data to indicate prices and the availability of products in order to get rich snippets.
- Use Internal Linking
Use internal linking, as this will help with your rankings for specific pages and posts. This helps because even though you may only have some backlinks pointing to your website or blog, if you have a lot of internal links pointing towards your content pages or posts from other pages on your site, then those links will be taken into consideration when ranking those specific pages on your website.
Many bloggers and website owners do not consider internal linking as important as external links. But, the fact is that it helps to get more traffic and improve your search engine rankings.
Internal linking is the process of linking one page to another page on the same domain. Internal links are easy to create, and they save you from losing your visitor.
If you want to learn SEO, you need to master the art of internal linking.
Internal links help search engines index all your pages without leaving any page out. Internal links help you create a clear website structure for better navigation and user experience.
Internal links boost your search engine rankings because it sends link juice (SEO value) across various important pages of your site or blog which helps those pages rank higher on Google.
- Write SEO Friendly URLs
URLs are another important aspect of technical search engine optimization. In addition to usability, there are also some technical advantages. The URL is displayed in the search results. If it contains the search term, this provides users with another relevancy signal and thus good reasons to click on your listing. In addition, you can use the URL to optimally distribute the keywords.
To make a long story short: Search engines interpret words in URLs as keywords, even if they do not actually exist. For example, if the URL contains the word "puppies," it helps to rank for that key phrase. However, all relevant words in a URL should be included and not just keywords. This creates a user-friendly URL that best describes what the page is about.
SEO-friendly URLs are short, descriptive, and easy to read. They also contain the words that describe your products or services.
This makes it easy for search engines to understand the content of your site and what your business is all about. Which in turn helps it rank better in search results.
For example, if you have a plumbing service and your URL contains "plumbing-services-in-orange-county," it's more likely to appear in the Google search results than a URL with a string of numbers such as "123456789."
What Does it Take to Learn SEO?
Learning SEO takes a lot of time, commitment, and patience. Many people think this is an easy skill to learn and get good at. However, there are things that need to be addressed which is why you need to understand the essentials before making a commitment.
You've decided to learn SEO. You're overwhelmed by the sheer amount of content on the topic. You can't read or watch everything there is, so where do you start? You've got questions about how much time it'll take, what else you need to learn, or if you're even ready to take this journey. I'm going to make it easy for you. Let's break your question down into its parts. I'll dig into each one and provide clarity in this post.
- A Passion For Search
A passion for search is essential because learning SEO can be overwhelming when you first start out. If you don't love what you're doing, it will be hard to stay motivated and remain interested in the subject when things get difficult.
You need to be passionate about searching to learn it. That's my opinion, and it will always be my opinion until something changes in the way I think.
You may think this is a silly request or standard, but let me explain why it's not. There are many things that you can learn in life — even if you don't have a passion for them — and you can still apply those skills in the real world. But when it comes to something like search engine optimization (SEO), I believe that having a passion for search is necessary to learn SEO properly and successfully apply your knowledge without driving yourself crazy in the process.
- Obsessive Attention To Detail
In my eyes, what makes a good SEO is obsessive attention to detail. There are many different elements to an SEO campaign and they all need to be managed properly in order to maximize the potential of the campaign.
In my experience, most agencies tend to have one core strength, whether that’s link building, on-page optimization, copywriting, or technical SEO. Each of these elements is essential for a successful campaign and I’ve seen too many campaigns fail because just one area was neglected.
A good SEO needs to be able to recognize when each of these areas needs attention and then manage the process of fixing it. For example, if rankings aren’t moving as much as they should be then it may be down to the quality of the links being built or the on-page optimization not being as strong as it can be. A good SEO will be able to identify that and fix it.
- Good Communication Skills
The best SEOs know how to explain their strategies in terms a non-technical person can understand. They are also able to communicate with developers and other technical staff without getting lost in translation.
You need good communication skills. SEO is a moving target because Google is always changing its algorithm. If you're not keeping up with the latest changes, you can't do your job well.
You need to be able to keep up with the latest changes in SEO and communicate them to non-expert colleagues, who are likely to see it as a mysterious thing they don't understand.
To do this, you have to be able to break down technical concepts into simple language that's easy for people who aren't experts in the subject to understand.
- A Flair For Technical Writing
Regardless of your background, you'll need to be able to write about technical topics for both clients and for search engines.
SEO is not a marketing career for people who are not interested in writing about technical topics. That's because there are more than 200 ranking factors that determine how search engines position websites and web pages in the search results, and many of them involve the use of words.
There is no way to learn SEO without learning to write, and there is no way to do well at it without having a flair for technical writing — the kind of writing you'd use to explain a gadget or a software program to someone else.
If you don't like writing, or if you're not particularly good at it, then SEO is not the right career choice.
- An Ability To Work Alone
You'll also need the ability to work alone. Optimizing for search engines involves researching topics, identifying new opportunities and ideas, writing content, and using other technical skills. While you may be able to collaborate with others as you build your skills, this is really a profession that requires independent thinking and decision-making.
Most SEO experts work as freelancers or else at small companies with few employees working in marketing. You can build your skills by applying them to your own website, or by doing volunteer work for nonprofits, but it's unlikely you will get much hands-on experience while training.
- A Willingness To Accept Mistakes
No one gets SEO right on the first try. You'll make mistakes along the way, but that's okay — it's an inevitable part of the learning process. If you get frustrated at your mistakes, you won't be able to learn from them and grow as an SEO expert.
- An Analytical Mind
You have to be able to look at data objectively and see what it says about your work. This can be especially challenging for new SEOs because they might feel attached or defensive about their work and unable to see its flaws or weaknesses.
Since SEO involves a lot of trial and error, it is important to have a strong foundation in the basics. This allows you to create a solid strategy, which you can then refine with data. For example, let’s say your goal is to rank for the keyword “SEO tips.” You can start by going through search results and checking out the top ten rankings. From there, you can take note of the different strategies they are using and brainstorm ways on how you can implement these in your own website.
Of course, it’s not just about applying strategies blindly. The next step would be to check if these strategies actually work by looking at how many people are searching for these keywords and which keywords are actually driving traffic to your site.
- A Good Understanding of Other Languages
Before you go and dismiss this article as being too difficult, keep in mind that while a degree of technical understanding is required to be successful in the world of online marketing, it shouldn't stop you from learning the basics.
The world of SEO is so technically focused that it's no wonder why many people assume you need to have advanced knowledge of coding languages. This isn't strictly true. While it's true that knowing HTML and CSS will help when it comes to making on-page changes, it isn't essential for success in the long run.
SEOs use many tools to help them quickly identify errors and make changes. However, some knowledge of HTML can come in really handy when using these tools if you want to get the best out of them. For example, knowing how Google sees your page or how users navigate your site can really improve your chances of ranking well.
Conclusion
SEO is a tricky subject. It takes skills and knowledge to really make it work for you. But learning it is worth your time and energy. By taking the time to learn how to properly optimize a website for search engines, you can gain access to a large audience that isn't aware of your business or services.
SEO is a hot topic, and many people want to know more about it in order to get a leg up on their competition online. While there is no single right way to learn SEO, we've compiled some recommendations that might help you on your search for information. Just remember: if you ever feel frustrated while learning anything related to SEO, don't be afraid to drop it and try something else – if it's not fun, the chances of your sticking with it are slim!
