Search engine optimization is important for the success of any online business. Every webmaster should understand what is SEO, how it works and the traffic potential it can generate for all website types.
In this SEO guide you will learn:
- What is SEO?
- Why is SEO important?
- An introduction to SEO for beginners
- Best way to learn how SEO Works
- SEO and Digital marketing
- Key Learnings
What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search engine optimization. It is a set of rules for optimizing your website so that it can achieve higher rankings in search engines’ organic results. It’s the process to follow to increase the visibility of your website in search engines and get more traffic.
SEO has two main goals. The first is to help you understand what users are searching for online so that you can create high-quality content to satisfy their intent. The second is to help you create a website that search engines can find, index, and understand its content.
In addition, following good SEO practices is a great way to increase the quality of a website by making it user-friendly, faster, and easier to navigate.
The most important SEO tasks have to do with:
- Identifying what users are searching for that is related to your products and services
- Creating content that will make users happy
- Providing the right signals to search engine crawlers and algorithms through various SEO techniques
SEO can be considered as a complete framework since the whole process has a number of rules (or guidelines), a number of stages, and a set of controls.
Why is SEO important?
In today’s competitive market, SEO marketing is more important than ever.
Search engines serve millions of users per day looking for answers to their questions or for solutions to their problems.
If you have a website, blog, or online store, SEO can help you get free targeted traffic from search engines.
SEO is important because:
- The majority of search engine users (more than 70% – see graph below) are more likely to click on one of the top 5 suggestions in the search engine results pages (SERPS). To take advantage of this and gain visitors to your website or customers to your online store, your website needs to appear in one of the top positions.
- SEO is not only about search engines but good SEO practices improve the user experience and usability of a website.
- Users trust search engines and having a presence in the top positions for the keywords the user is searching, increases the website’s trust.
- SEO is good for the social promotion of your web site. People who find your website by searching Google or Bing are more likely to promote it on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media channels.
- SEO is important for the smooth running of a big web site. Web sites with more than one author can benefit from SEO in a direct and indirect way. Their direct benefit is an increase in organic traffic and their indirect benefit is having a common framework (checklists) to use before publishing content on the site.
- SEO can put you ahead of the competition. If two websites are selling the same thing, the search engine optimized website is more likely to have more customers and make more sales.
An introduction to SEO for beginners
For beginners to SEO the above definition may sound complicated.
In simpler terms, Search Engine Optimization is a way to improve your website so that it will appear closer to the top positions in the search results of Google, Yahoo, Bing, or other search engines.
When you perform a search on Google the order by which the returning results are displayed, is based on complex algorithms.
These algorithms (also known as search engine ranking factors) take into account a number of rules before they decide which webpage will be shown in the first position, second position, etc.
Optimizing your website for search engines will give you an advantage over non-optimized sites and you increase your chances of ranking higher.
Watch the video tutorial to learn what is SEO, how it works and why it’s very important.
What are the main stages of the Search Engine Optimization process?
As I mentioned above, SEO is not a static process but rather a framework with rules and processes.
For simplicity though, SEO can be broken down into 3 main types:
Technical SEO: With technical SEO you can ensure that search engines can crawl and index your website without any issues.
On-site SEO: Rules to apply on your site and content to make it search engine friendly.
Off-site SEO: Ways to promote your website or blog so that it can rank higher in search results.
Technical SEO
The first stage in the SEO process is called technical SEO. As the name implies, technical SEO has nothing to do with the actual content of a website or with website promotion methods.
It has to do with settings you need to configure to make the job of search engine crawlers easier. Usually, once you get your technical SEO correct, you may not have to deal with it again.
On the other hand, if you have problems with crawling and indexing, it can negatively impact your rankings.
On-site SEO
The second stage is On-Page SEO. On-Page SEO has to do primarily with the content and other elements found on a page.
Unlike technical and off-page SEO, the main focus of on-page SEO is to provide search engine crawlers enough signals so that they can understand the meaning and context of your content.
Remember that search engines don’t read a page like a human so they are looking for signals to figure out what a page is all about.
It is at this stage that you will deal with website structure, SEO keywords, title optimizations, headings, internal links, image SEO, structured data markup, and other techniques that can send the right signals to search engines.
If followed correctly, on-page SEO will also improve the usability and credibility of a website or blog.
Note that content optimization is part of on-page SEO but sometimes this is referred to as Content SEO.
Off-site SEO
The third stage is Off-Page SEO.
Besides the changes, you can do to your website (on-site SEO) so that it ranks higher in the SERPs, the other way to improve your website’s ranking position is by using off-site SEO techniques.
Why is off-page SEO important?
In general, when a user types a search query, search engine algorithms look into their index and try to find the best pages that can satisfy the intent of the user.
Pages that are good candidates appear in the first positions of the search results.
One of the factors to determine the position of a webpage in the results is the number of incoming links (backlinks).
Backlinks are a signal of trust and depending on where the links are coming, they can greatly affect your ranking position.
If the links are coming from well-known and trusted sites, your ranking will be positively affected.
If they are paid links, links in article directories, link farms, or a result of an exchange, your ranking will be negatively affected.
Getting links this way is a violation of Google guidelines and most probably it will also result in a Google Penalty.
What can you do to get more links?
That’s a very good question and I am sure that if you search the Internet for that phrase you will get hundreds of different answers.
You can read this article on how to approach link building but your primary focus not be how to get links but how to create good quality content for your website.
Good content will get you natural links which in turn will give you high rankings and traffic.
If you try to buy links or get them the easy way, you may have temporary success and then see your website disappearing from the top pages after the next Google update.
What is the best way to learn how SEO Works?
The best way to learn how SEO works is to practice SEO.
Besides learning the different concepts and theories, the only way to find out if what you’ve learned works, is to apply the various SEO techniques on a website and monitor your rankings.
If your rankings and organic traffic are increasing, then this means that you are in the right direction. If not, you will have to revise your SEO strategy and action plan.
Resources to Learn More About SEO
- How Search Engines Work – Before starting with SEO, it is important to understand how search engines work. At the end of the day, your goal with SEO is to influence search engines to ‘trust’ your website, and knowing how they actually rank websites, will help you make better decisions.
- The Complete SEO Course – Our own SEO Course which covers all aspects of SEO with step-by-step examples and case studies.
- How to become an SEO Expert – A guide with a list of resources to stay informed about new developments in the SEO World.
- DIY SEO Tutorial – A tutorial on how to do SEO on your own. It covers both basic and advanced SEO Concepts.
- SEO Checklist – A handy checklist to check that you have optimized all elements.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide – A handy guide by Google for beginners to SEO.
- SEO Certifications – a list of the best SEO courses to follow and get certified.
What is the difference between SEO and Digital marketing?
Some people often ask me “Is SEO the same as Digital Marketing?” The simplest answer I can give is that SEO is one of the tools available in your Digital Marketing arsenal.
SEO can be part of your overall Digital Marketing campaign which normally includes other things like social media promotion, PPC, content strategy, etc.
Good content is still the most important success factor with or without SEO
Before closing this introduction to search engine optimization you must have very clear in your mind that SEO cannot help you if you don’t have good content.
In other words, if you try to SEO a website with not very good content your chances of succeeding (in the long term) are minimum.
On the other hand, a website with good content can do well with or without SEO. SEO will just give the website an extra boost.
Key Learnings
What is SEO?
SEO is a set of rules for optimizing your website so that it can achieve higher rankings in search engines’ organic results.
Why is SEO important?
The majority of search engine traffic goes to the top 5 results. With SEO your website can appear in one of the top positions for your target keywords and get visits to your website.
Can you do SEO yourself?
Yes, there are various SEO courses and online guides that can help you learn and do SEO on your own. Besides learning the theory, the best way to learn SEO is through practice.
Alex, I don’t understand all the jargon (on-site,off-site) SEO and I have a very simple question: Will SEO bring me more traffic? 🙂
George Hi
Certainly will bring you more traffic and will also create more happy users!
Thanks for passing by
Alex.
Hey George,
SEO when done appropriately can not only bring traffic but it also brings potential customers that are actually looking for your business related services and products. Thus it’s very important for an SEO to understand the target audiences and nature of business.
Thank you Alex, I am really impressed by your content.
Basanta Hi
Glad you find it useful
Alex.
Really enjoyed reading this article. Just one question.
When you say that a site should have good content, what exactly is ‘good content’?
Thanks
Simply put, ‘good content’ is content that has been properly researched for accuracy, speaks about topics that are popular (trending), and utilizes keywords that your target audience is using to find you. It must be easy to read, yet informative for your target audience and make you appear to be a leader in whatever industry you operate in. Ultimately, it should be content that people also want to share!
Very well said Rahul!
Alex
‘Good Content’ means your content should be unique, not a copied one. The second thing, it should be informative and revealing the exact information that reader wants.
Great SEO Article… I wanted to become an seo expert, this is just awesome and very helpful in knowing so much about SEO…
Thanks mate
Very well said, Alex! And when you are looking for an SEO company to work with, it is imperative that you focus not just the cost but the quality of the service you will receive and the potential return of investment.
Very well said Alex.. Yes in today competitive world everyone try to find the way to earn more profit in business. SEO makes it very much easy to gain the online customers directly to your business. Quality SEO services can take company to different level than expectation.
Hi Ethan
That’s true, quality is the most success factor for SEO companies.
Thanks
Alex
Very useful article when i read article clear the all seo issue .Thank you Alex
Thanks for sharing such a good Article, its very helpful for the new comers of eCommerce business starters.
Very nice article, without seo site is nothing.
Hello, Alex!
Great article with in-depth knowledge about SEO and why it is important for websites especially websites that related with online businesses. It is a great guide for SEO beginners. Helped me a lot to understand the each and every point about SEO. SEO helps businesses to find new customers and promote their brand on top pages of search engines that make easy for users to find your brand. SEO helps to boost your revenue by increasing the number of traffic to your website and by increasing sales.
Thank you for sharing the great post Alex and keep doing a good job.
Hi Gloria,
Glad I was able to help you understand SEO.
All the best with your SEO efforts
Alex
Great SEO Post. Thank You
Very well define the seo role.
Thanks
I’m new to SEO and The SEO Key book spells it out so that a high school student can learn it. I haven’t applied any of the tools yet- I just finished the book. But I feel confident in my ability to implement the tools now because of this book.
Hi Beqa
Glad that you found our book useful.
Thanks Alex
Thanks for the blog it is nice source of information for SEOs and Webmasters. SEO is very important to get online business. For increasing the ranking in Search Engines and for online visibility every business should go with the quality SEO services. Hope you will continue to share interesting SEO blogs with us.
Hi Ben
I will sure do! Make sure that you subscribe to my newsletter to get my latest blog posts.
Alex
Alex,
Thank you for the insightful and well-written article. As being my initial exposure to this topic, I found it easy to understand and feel I now have a solid starting point from where I can begin implementing SEO strategies with my own site.
I noticed that your page appears at #1 on the Google search results for “why is SEO important”–a pretty compelling testimonial. Would you be willing (and I would personally find it very helpful) to point out a small handful of places on this site that you revised to improve its SEO (e.g. off-site and on-site)?
Thanks again,
Rob
Hi Rob
SEO Improvement is a non-stop task. Besides publishing new content on a regular basis, one of the things every SEO should do is to go back and improve existing content and find new link opportunities.
Thanks
Alex
Hello Alex, Thank you for this article. I have a hard time grasping all these technicalities and terminologies around the wide web. I am an early retiree here in our country (PH) and the reason why I decided such because I want to stay home and take care of my old mother and while doing that I need to have an online job. On my search I tried applying tutorial ESL but failed, I have blogs at blogger for fun which I created few years ago just update it lately, I searched about how to become VA, and one online job want to have an experienced SEO marketer. I am a manager by profession on my regular job but dot com era enticed me and I am simply awed by people who shared ideas freely like you. Thank you for your free eBook.
Nice. Thanks for sharing. SEO is very important for any kind of business. For visibility, brand awareness and higher ranking in search engines. Keep sharing your blog with more SEO updates.
How lucky I am! I’m searching new ideas containing article like this cause I’m getting failed to get a few traffic for my blog although I work every day on it and it has been going for six months. I think this article will help me to achieve my goal.
Thanks
Sadhan Pal
Hello Alex,
Thanks for sharing this blog post with us about the SEO and its importance. 🙂
Hi Sam
My pleasure, glad you liked it.
Thanks
Alex
where is the starting point in blogging?
Hi James
Our Blogging Guide for Beginners will give you all the details: https://www.reliablesoft.net/wordpress-blogging/
Thanks
Alex
A helpful post on seo tips. We need more posts like this on SEO.
Thanks Alex
Good information for the beginners.Thanks for Sharing.Keep it up.
Your blog is indeed a comprehensive take on SEO. It is pretty obvious that SEO has become a survival tactic for any website to beat its competitors and stay at the top on search engine results.
Thank you so much for providing such a useful information. You have made it so easy and clear to understand about SEO.
Targeted traffic to a website can provide publicity, revenue, and exposure like no other channel of marketing.
Investing in SEO can have an exceptional rate of return compared to other types of marketing and promotion.
Hi Alex,
Great Post ,
SEO is an investment that will surely give positive result after months of hardwork. It helps to get more organic and genuine traffic to the website and increases page rank.
Very good information alex,
This will help me with my website since I’ve been struggling to grasp the basics of search engine optimization. Maybe some of these key factors is what is needed for me to get my website ranked.
Hi Alex,
Thank you for sharing wonderful information on search engine optimization.
I am struggling with few doubts if you can help me to clear then it will be very helpful.
1. My domain authority is dancing sometimes it crossing 15 and sometimes it backs to 10, I dont know why this happend.
2. I am still not using https for my blog, Should I switch to https?
Thank you
SEO is very helpful. As an on line marketer, I would know. It’s very much of a hassle at first but when you get it all figured out after a long time of practice, it is more beneficial than the traditional way of marketing. The return of investment is so high!
Nice.
SEO is very important for any kind of business. For visibility, brand awareness and higher ranking in search engines.
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the blog it is the nice source of information for SEO and Webmasters. SEO is very important to get online business.
Hi Brakh
Thanks a lot for your nice comment, good luck with your SEO efforts.
Alex
I got good knowledge on SEO, the importance of quality contents and guest blogging. It is a great guide for SEO beginners. Both on-page and off-page techniques help website to increase traffic and get better position in the search engine.
Hi Alex, do you have official info (meaning Google’s info) about the percentage of people clicking on SEO results rather on SEM (ads).
I understand many people simply does not prefer to click on ads (although these ads appear on top results), and they just start viewing (and clicking) considering the first 5 or 6 SEO result only. Thanks!
Hi Guillermo
There are no “official stats” but many studies have shown that aprx 65% of clicks goes to the first 5 organic results.
Thanks
Alex
Hi Alex,
A very helpful and informative post. I have followed a couple of on-page and off-page techniques to optimize my blog and certainly, the efforts have been paid off by getting a place in SERP for the desired keywords. SEO helps!
Very impressive post. All these tips are handy for me. Im going to follow these strategies with my business blog in 2018. Thanks a lot Alex for creating this kind of beneficial contents.
Thank you, Alex! Your article really helped me a lot. I understand more about SEO, how it works, and how it is important on digital marketing.
Impressive information in the article about how important SEO is to today’s world of digital marketing. It’s a great start for beginners & for experts to look back and have an easy look through. How do you personally think about SEO in today’s era of technology & digital marketing?
Thanks for the info Alex about the importance of Seo.
Seo can be very boring but its all about the results that counts.
Cheers Alex
That’s true Michel. Results do matter and SEO can help you get there faster.
Thanks
Thanks, Alex. For this comprehensive SEO article. 🙂 Sometimes I wonder what will be the future of the search engines because then maybe 100s billion keywords will be there and 10 times more websites owners will be competing for the same keyword! Thanks for sharing…
Thanks for the wonderful information on SEO importance. SEO is really important factor for any website. We should properly optimize websites for better indexing and website rankings. That is only way to achieve our SEO goals.
A set of worthy information. One thing here touched me that — a quality content always a big factor for a site’s performance in SERPs. Thanks for your amazing work!!!
Great topic about seo. Really this topic is very useful for seo users. Thanks for posting its advantages.
Very well explained SEO and its importance. informative and concise.
Really in today’s competitive market, SEO is more important than ever.
Thanks for posting this wonderful post.
Thanks for sharing this comprehensive SEO article.
Thank you,
Alex
Thanks a lot Parth.
Alex
Hey Alex! Great post, Very informative and helpful for beginers!!!
Thanks
Hi Kimberly
Thanks a lot. Welcome to SEO!
Alex
Thanks for the excellent information about SEO importance. SEO is a really important factor for any website. We should properly optimize websites for better indexing and website rankings. That is the only way to accomplish the goals of your website.
Hi
Yes, that’s true, SEO is important for a website’s success. Everyone wants to rank higher in Google and those that follow solid SEO practices, will win the race (and get more traffic).
Thanks
Thank you Alex, I am really impressed by your content.
Short and sweet, unlike other articles on SEO. Love it.
Very easy to understand post. You really SEO made simple for beginners! Amazing article!
Hii, Your article is very very unique and your writing style is very simple I mean easily understand. Please Keep it up and write more article.
Really great article. you clearly justifies the importance of SEO for the online business. When people search for products and services, you obviously want to appear as high in the search engine rankings as possible as when people will click on your sites you should have a valuable content which people share.
Hi Alex, I am a regular reader of your blog. I understood some new points about the importance of SEO. I am dam sure that the presence of the web industry cannot think without SEO. Thanks for your good article.
Great article, thank you very much Alex 🙂
Hello Alex, I am very glad to read your article again. I try to read different types of marketing related article always. Today I surf to read about SEO and I found your one. I think today’s web world cannot think without SEO. Day by day the rang of SEO in becoming wide. Thank you so much for your awesome article. Keep covering this type of valuable content more.
Hi Melina
Thanks a lot! Make sure you subscribe to my newsletter to get the latest posts on your inbox.
All the best
Alex
Great…! Seo is most important to enhance our business, and everyone wants visibility and higher ranking in Search Engine, Thank you so much for sharing and keep it up..!
Thanks a lot Tonya!
Well defined. Thanks for sharing such an informative article.
Thanks for your informative SEO Post. It helps in optimizing the content of your website or blog with the keywords searched by the consumers associated with your products and services to increase your visibility.
Hi Rob
Thanks for commenting. Indeed, optimizing your website for the search intent, is the best way to go.
Thanks
Alex
Hello Alex, I am very glad to read your article again. I surf to read about SEO and I found your one best. I think today’s web world cannot think without SEO.
This is clean guide on SEO Alex.
The industry is tough and constantly changing. So we need to always get updated to keep up with it.
Happy weekend
Hi Enstine
That’s true. SEO chances all the time and keeping yourself educated of new features it’s the only way to go.
All the best
Alex
I have read lots about seo and this one is also the better. The more i read the more i gain seo knowledge that will surely help me throughout my blogging career
Great content.
Found this to be very helpful.
Thanks for sharing, it has helped me a lot
Thanks for sharing such useful information with us. You are doing a great job by educating new digital marketers and bloggers about SEO and google ranking factors.
Thanks for writing great piece of information.
Those who are not aware of SEO importance, now they can understand well how important is to getting ranking on first page.
Really helpful article for me as i am newbie in this industry. wish me a good luck..
Regards
MJ
Hi Micheal
Good luck with your SEO efforts!
Thankyou for sharing such a nice article and your knowledge with us. Every business with a Web site should make Search Engine Optimization trying to get your site as high up as possible on Google and Bing search-results pages a part of their growth strategy. At its most basic, “SEO” means finding ways to increase your site’s appearance in web visitors’ search results..
Hi John
That’s true, SEO is about finding ways to increase visibility in search engines results.
All the best
Alex
Thank you for describing such a difficult topic in such an easy manner. I learned so many things about Search Engine Optimization through your blog. Please keep posting such good content.
Hi
Glad I could help. SEO seems difficult at first but once you get to know how it works and start practicing, everything starts to make sense and the whole process becomes easier.
Thanks
Alex
Hi, Thanks.
Great SEO Article which is very innovative to improve your bussiness and to help the new beginners in this field.I wanted to become an seo expert, this is just awesome and very helpful article. Seo is most important to enhance our business, and everyone wants visibility and higher ranking in Search Engine
Hi Shweta
That’s correct. SEO is the most important process to improve the visibility of a business in search engines.
Thanks
Alex
Great Content about SEO, thanks for sharing.
It’s interesting how the majority of search engine users are more likely to click on one of the top 5 suggestions that first appear. My boss wants to increase sales income and he asked us for suggestions. After reading this article, I will definitely recommend him to contact an SEO professional to help us be on the top list of search engines.
Hi Derek
The majority of Google trafific is distributed to the websites appearing on the first page and especially on top of the results. It is also a fact that websites appearing on the first position get much more traffic than websites appearing on the second or third position.
Good luck explaining to your boss the benefits of SEO.
Alex.
Excellent write-up Alex. All the terms are explained in a well detailed and beginner-friendly manner
Hi Jonathan
Thanks a lot. Glad I could help.
Alex
A very informative blog to us & yes SEO is very important to our website.
Thanks
Hi Alister
Thanks for your comment. All the best with your SEO efforts!
Alex
Awesome article…very much informative, lots of learning related to seo including off-page and on-page seo.
Thanks for this valuable article.
Can we rank on Google without backlinks and just following the basic SEO process?
Thanks for the share.This is the key in ranking in google. Although the it changes so much.
Awesome post, Thanks for taking the time to compile it, google changes the way the rank so much its important to stay current.
Hi Ryan
I agree, following SEO changes is important to stay current and to maintain your Google rankings.
Thanks for commenting
Alex
SEO is the foundation of every website without SEO you can not totally depends on paid mediums.
Hi William
Yes, with SEO you can rely less on other channels, especially paid ones like Google Ads.
All the best
Alex
Thanks for the information share. I think SEO is the smartest thing anyone could learn. Keep writing great info like this.
Hi Chevelle
That’s true. Learning SEO these days is more important than ever.
Thanks for your comment.
Alex
This article gives the full information for the beginners who want to learn SEO.
Hey, This article is very informative & useful for the beginners of SEO, I am very impressive the way of writing. Thanks for sharing.
Hi, Thanks for the blog its really informative, along with that there are 200 ranking factors that need to be checked. It helps in improving the organic traffic of the website in a better and effective way.
Thanks for sharing this informative blog. It is very useful for the beginners of SEO.
Hi Alex,
Nice article you have written.
And rightly you have cleared the doubts of those who believe SEO and Digital marketing are different. Thanks.
What is your opinion on Bookmarking for Off-Page SEO?
TIA