SEO 101 (Introduction to SEO)
You need to read our SEO 101 guide. If you’re someone who owns a blog, an online business, an e-commerce shop, a website, or you’re a professional promoting your services online, it is very important that you know a thing or two about Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Many people turn to social media or video platforms to promote their services and think that it’s enough, but guess what? Those aren’t enough to create an authentic and high-quality online site. If you’re serious about getting feedback and results from any of your online posts, learning SEO will give you an edge and a deeper understanding of how internet marketing really works. Read our SEO 101 guide.
What Is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the process of making your online content relevant to search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing to increase the traffic (viewers) to your website. It is making the content you are promoting more searchable and discoverable online. Being more visible on the web means more opportunities to earn money.
You want people to find you online so that they will see what your business or services are offering. And you don’t want just any random person to find your content. You want individuals who are genuinely interested in your niche or what you have to offer.
This means you want ‘organic’ or natural people coming from searches, and not people who were unceremoniously driven to your page because of paid advertisements. You want organic traffic because these are the visitors who are most likely to buy, subscribe, share your content, and ask questions about what you are offering. SEO can give you that organic traffic.
How Important Is Learning SEO?
The internet is a vast ocean with trillions of random users worldwide. You don’t just post content out there, and expect the right people to find it. It is like putting a ship into the waters without steering it in the right direction. You want to attract the right viewers, and most importantly, a good amount of traffic into your site. And the best way to find those people is through search engines.
- The top 3 search engines in the world are Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
- The others are AOL, Baidu, Yandex, Yippy, and Duckduckgo.
Why search engines? It’s because billions of people use it daily. The majority of the online traffic generated is driven by search engines. It is the same logic as foot traffic and prime spots in business. You go to where the people are so you can sell your merchandise with maximum visibility.
Google gets 63,000 searches per second worldwide – per second, imagine that! Of course, you want a piece of that number and steer them into your direction. Imagine how much your business can grow if thousands of people are able to view it every day.
But here’s how it gets difficult – there are also millions of other online businesses and content out there scrambling to get into the prime spot of Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Competition is tough! So how can you make sure that you get a slot in those prime spots? The honest answer is, there is no sure-fire way.
If you are a new business online posting new content, it will take time to build your online reputation in order to be noticed. But it is not impossible. With the right SEO knowledge, strategy, consistency, and a little bit of luck, landing on the first page of search engines can change the way your online business grows in a huge way.
How Does SEO Work?
SEO is about understanding the minds of the people when they search for something online. It is about knowing the questions they are asking and the exact ‘keywords’ they use when searching. SEO is understanding the type of content they read and want to learn about.
Think of search engines as machines. These machines have ‘crawlers’ that scour and index billions of information online, from images, articles, and videos. They find the ones that are most likely to answer your search questions and present them to you.
When these crawlers show you the possible answers to your question, the information will come in an order called ‘ranking’. This means that the most relevant content will appear in the front pages of the search result. The content that lands on the first page mean they are well optimized for SEO search.
Some key elements of SEO
Learning SEO cannot be accomplished with just one lesson. You need to know a few key elements such as focus keywords, search engine results page (SERP) features, white hat, and black hat SEO techniques, analytics, and many others.
Depending on the goals that you want to achieve for your website, you may need to hire an SEO specialist if you feel you don’t have time to learn everything. Also, search engine algorithms change every few years so what you know now may not be applicable two more years down the line.
SEO 101 conclusion
Every website is unique and will require different strategies and approaches in order to help with the rankings. If your site is well optimized, then it will surely work its way to being relevant in searches and establish online authority. It will surely give you the earning potential you are aiming for. A well-established website cannot easily be knocked out of its prime spot, even after many years. We hope our SEO 101 guide has been helpful and good luck on optimizing your websites!
