What is SEO? The Ultimate Guide to SEO for Beginners

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is a way of improving the ranking of a website on search engines when users conduct a search. Creating great content is a terrific first step, but it is also necessary to have a strategy to maximize visibility on search engines in order to reach your target audience. Good SEO makes that possible.

The 4 Pillars of SEO

In the past, effective SEO included a number of technical factors which were difficult to understand and utilize without a basic understanding of web design and development. Now, though, in addition to those technical factors, SEO also requires an ability to write articles, search for information, and interact well with the community in a specific field.

SEO includes many different jobs, but it can be divided into four main pillars:

  1. Quality Content: When it comes to SEO, this is the most important factor. Search engines were created to help people find information on the Internet. Regularly scheduled content that is useful to readers will always be in the top position.
  2. Technical SEO: This includes a variety of technical SEO factors. Optimizing these helps ensure that your site gets crawled and indexed by search engines. Without this behind-the-scenes scaffolding, all of your efforts on content as well as on-page and off-page SEO will be wasted.
  3. On-page SEO: This is the practice of optimizing web pages for specific keywords that help search engines and visitors find your website. This can include things like tags, headings, and content. This has become increasingly important since Google rolled out a series of updates, especially Google Panda and Google Hummingbird.
  4. Off-page SEO: These are the activities that encourage visits to your site. They include guest bloggers, clicks from social media shares, outreach emails to influencers in your area, links from other websites, comments on forums, and, of course, creating quality content that generates momentum.

How to Get Your SEO On the Right Track

Essentially, SEO works by proving to search engines that your content is the best result for the current topic. This is because all search engines have the same goal, and that is to show the best, most relevant results to their users. If your rankings and organic traffic are increasing, this means your SEO is on the right track. Otherwise, you will have to re-adjust your SEO strategy and action plan. Exactly how you do this depends on the search engine you are optimizing for but the four pillars of good SEO remain the same.

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