If you're wondering, "What is SEO?" you're in the right place.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), makes your website come up more in search engines like Google and Bing.
But understanding the term is just the beginning. You need to know a lot more to really boost your website's traffic.
That's why our team at ScaleStaion has put together this detailed beginner's SEO guide to help you quickly find what you're looking for.
What is SEO?
SEO is a series of steps to help websites appear higher in the organic results of Google and other search engines.
SEO can be done both on your website (on-site) and elsewhere on the internet (off-site). That's why you often hear about "on-page" and "off-page" SEO.
In practice, SEO usually involves:
- Finding the right keywords
- Creating and improving content
- Fixing technical issues on your website
- Building links from other websites to yours
How does SEO work?
Google uses complex processes called "algorithms" to rank web pages.
These algorithms look at many different factors to decide where a webpage should appear in search results.
You don't need to fully understand how these algorithms work (nobody does completely).
However, understanding the basics can help you grasp how SEO works and what you need to do to optimise your pages to rank well on Google.
#1 Making Sure Your Content Is Relevant
Your main task in SEO is to provide relevant content. Why? Because Google's main goal is to show users relevant results.
Relevance isn't just about showing pages about apples instead of oranges when someone searches for “apples.”
It's also about meeting the user’s search intent—the reason behind their search.
There are four major types of search intent:
- Navigational: When someone searches for a specific page.
- Informational: When someone wants to learn something.
- Commercial: When someone is considering a purchase.
- Transactional: When someone is ready to purchase or take action.
Things you must consider to create relevant content:
- Topical relevance: Google figures out a page’s topic by looking at the keywords on the page. Optimise your pages with keywords, but don’t overdo it.
- Content-Type: Ensure your page provides the right kind of content for the query. Look at the results that rank for a particular keyword (e.g., landing pages, product pages, informational posts, reviews, etc.).
- Freshness of The Content: Some topics, like news updates or product reviews, need fresh, frequently updated information. If the search query is time-sensitive, make sure your content stays current.
- Location: Google may show different results based on the searcher’s location. If this applies, adjust your strategy (e.g., if you run a local brick-and-mortar business, follow local SEO best practices).
#2 Creating High-Quality Content
Finding the right keywords is just the beginning.
To rank for those keywords, you need to create and optimise your content effectively. Content creation and optimisation are crucial parts of SEO.
Here are a few key things that make content high-quality:
- Comprehensive Content: Thoroughly cover the topic and answer all potential questions a visitor might have. It does not matter how long the content is, but each page must be ensured to be a complete resource for searchers.
- The Uniqueness of Your Content: Provide value-added content, not just repeat what’s already out there. Provide a unique angle, useful data, helpful examples, or original visuals.
- E-E-A-T signals: Google values Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). Provide accurate and reliable information, be an expert on your topic, and demonstrate it on your site and elsewhere.
- Readability of Your Content: Make your text easy to read by structuring your content logically, writing short sentences, avoiding passive voice, and maintaining a consistent tone of voice.
If you are having trouble brainstorming and creating relevant and useful content, then ScaleStation is always there to help you with its comprehensive SEO Services.
#4 Meet The Website Usability Standards of Google
Google prefers user-friendly websites. Technical SEO is important for this. It makes sure your website is easy for search engines to crawl and index and meets usability standards.
This includes factors like:
- Give Proper Site Security: Your website should be secure, with an SSL certificate (using HTTPS instead of HTTP).
- Fast Page Speed: Faster pages rank higher in SERP because they offer a better user experience.
- Mobile-Friendly Website: Google uses "mobile-first indexing," meaning it assesses your content based on its performance on mobile devices. Mobile SEO makes sure mobile users can easily access your content.
- Easy to Use Website: Your website should have a clear structure, making it easy for visitors to find what they need and navigate without any issues.
#5 Build Authority Of Your Website
Search engines use various off-page signals to decide if your site is trustworthy. One of the most important signals is backlinks—links from other websites to yours.
Generally, the more high-quality links your page gets, the more authority it gains in Google's eyes, which can lead to higher rankings.
This makes link building—getting backlinks to your site—a crucial part of SEO.
There are many link-building strategies, such as:
- Creating valuable content: Develop content that is useful and naturally attracts links (e.g., original research, interactive pages, free tools).
- Guest blogs: Write posts for other websites that link back to your site.
- Broken link building: Find the broken links on other websites and suggest your pages as replacements.
Always focus on the quality of the backlinks over quantity. One high-quality backlink is more valuable than many low-quality ones.
While you want as many links as possible, they should come from relevant, high-quality pages related to your site's topic.
Lastly, remember:
Google ranks individual pages, not entire websites, but the total number of backlinks to your site can still impact a page's ranking.
Internal linking (linking from one site's page to another) can pass authority between your pages, just like external links do.
What's The Importance Of SEO?
In simple terms, SEO can drive a lot of traffic to your website. In December 2023, over 84.2 billion people visited Google.com. Even a small portion of this traffic could greatly benefit your business.
For the majority of the websites, search engines are the biggest source of traffic, providing over 60% of visitors.
The best part is that businesses don't have to pay for this traffic. Unlike paid ads, such as PPC ads on search engines or social media ads, SEO continues to deliver benefits long after you've invested in link-building or created valuable content.
How Does Google Know How To Rank A Webpage?
Search engines like Google and Bing have a single goal: to provide users with the most relevant answers or information.
Whenever you use them, their algorithms pick the pages that best match your query and rank them, showing the most popular or authoritative ones first.
To provide the right information to users, search engines analyse five main factors:
- User Intent: Understanding the purpose behind someone's query and matching it with the most helpful content.
- Relevancy: Evaluating how well the content on a page matches the search query, using factors like topics and keywords.
- Content Quality: Using the E-E-A-T model (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) to identify the most helpful content.
- Site Usability: Considering factors like page speed and mobile-friendliness to ensure content is easy to access.
- Context: Taking into account the searcher's past behaviour and settings, such as location.
Search engines use complex algorithms to analyse all this information. While these algorithms are secret, SEO providers have identified key factors that influence page rankings, known as ranking factors.
Following the E-E-A-T framework can significantly enhance your SEO strategy:
- Expertise: You’re an expert on the subject matter.
- Experience: You have personal experience with the topics you write about.
- Authoritativeness: Others see you as a credible source, with other sites linking to yours.
- Trustworthiness: Your website and content are reliable and up-to-date.
As AI becomes more prominent in search, human expertise and experience will become even more important. Unlike algorithms, human experts can offer unique insights and a personal touch that AI-generated content lacks.
Types of SEO
SEO can be divided into three major categories. These are as follows:
- On-page SEO: This involves optimising the content on your website, like using relevant keywords, to improve rankings.
- Off-page SEO: This includes actions taken outside your website, such as building backlinks, to boost your site's authority and rankings.
- Technical SEO: This focuses on the technical elements of your site, like improving page speed and mobile-friendliness, to enhance performance.
Understanding these types highlights the importance of SEO in driving traffic and improving your website's visibility. Let’s dive deeper into each type.
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO deals with your website content. To rank well on SERP and attract traffic, your website's content needs to be easily found and understood. Google also emphasises the importance of SEO by favouring helpful content.
These services might include:
- Allocating a target keyword to each important webpage.
- Optimising page titles to include specific keywords.
- Updating product descriptions in an online store.
- Updating the blog with fresh content.
- Revising the structure of old articles or service pages.
- Using the right HTML tags to organise content.
- Developing a content plan for each stage of the customer journey.
If your website’s content isn’t targeting relevant keywords or is generally unhelpful, it might be time to improve your on-page SEO.
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO affects all the activities that happen outside your website and can influence your site’s rankings.
A key part of off-page SEO is getting high-quality backlinks. But off-page SEO includes more than just backlinks. It can also involve:
- Managing and enhancing your social media presence
- Doing outreach and digital PR
- Creating content for other platforms, like YouTube
- Managing online reviews
- Monitoring and removing spammy backlinks that could harm your SEO
If your website isn’t getting much traffic because it’s not being talked about elsewhere, you might need to improve your off-page SEO. For more details, keep reading this comprehensive SEO guide.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO deals with the behind-the-scenes elements of your site that impact how easily search engines and users can navigate and understand it. Effective technical SEO ensures your site loads quickly, is easy to go through, and can be easily crawled by search engines.
Problems like slow page load times, broken images, and poor navigation can hurt user experience and are signs of poor technical SEO.
Key components of technical SEO include:
- Performing a technical audit of the site
- Identifying and fixing duplicate content issues
- Using a robots.txt file to guide search engine crawling
- Creating and maintaining a clear sitemap
- Optimising code and reducing file sizes for faster page loading
- Managing the crawl budget efficiently
- Handling website migrations smoothly
- Ensuring the site is mobile-friendly
The goal of technical SEO is to make your site user-friendly for both visitors and search engines. If users find it hard to navigate to key pages, search engines will too.
For example, a clear site structure helps users and search engines easily find important content. Explore our detailed SEO guide to learn more about technical SEO and other types of SEO.
Other Types of SEO
In addition to the three main types of SEO, there are many other strategies for enhancing your visibility on search engines.
Here are a few additional ways to improve SEO that don't always fit into the usual categories:
Image SEO
Optimising your images with the right HTML tags is essential, just like the text content on your site. Image SEO helps your images appear in Google search results.
Video SEO
Video SEO involves optimising various parts of a video, such as:
- Title
- URL
- Tags
- Description
You can also add structured data to your site's code to help your videos get noticed in search engines. This data helps Google understand your video's content better, and platforms like YouTube automatically include options like key moments.
Ecommerce SEO
For online stores, ecommerce SEO is crucial to attract more traffic and increase sales. This involves more than just updating product titles and descriptions. It may also include optimising your brand's presence on external platforms like Etsy or Amazon.
Given the competitive nature of e-commerce, having excellent SEO is vital to stand out among online shoppers.
Mobile SEO
To succeed, your site must work well on all devices, especially mobile phones. Mobile SEO ensures that your site is fast and user-friendly on mobile devices. This often involves technical SEO, optimising your code for better mobile performance.
Another aspect of mobile SEO is finding the right keywords people use on their phones, which can differ from desktop searches. Conducting mobile keyword research is essential for this.
Local SEO
For businesses with brick and motor stores, local SEO can drive more foot traffic. Optimising your content and platforms like Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) helps your brand reach a local audience.
Local SEO involves:
- Working on online citations
- Setting up a Google Business Profile
- Targeting and tracking local keywords
- Creating content for local searches
- Building partnerships and backlinks with local connections
Local businesses should still focus on the main types of SEO—on-page, off-page, and technical SEO—while also taking specific actions to improve local rankings.
How To Monitor and Track SEO Results?
To get your website into search results, you need to focus on technical setup, content, and links. It's also important to monitor your progress to keep improving your strategy.
Tracking SEO success involves measuring data about traffic, engagement, and links. While many companies have their own specific SEO key performance indicators, here are some common ones:
- Increase in organic traffic.
- Rankings for keywords (separated into branded and non-branded terms).
- Conversions coming from organic traffic.
- The average amount of time visitors spend on a webpage and bounce rate.
- Top landing pages driving organic traffic.
- Total number of indexed pages.
- Link growth (including both new and lost links).
Understanding these metrics will help you see how SEO works and guide your ongoing efforts.
White Hat SEO Vs. Black Hat SEO
Understanding how SEO works involves recognising the different ways to enhance your website for search engines. Most marketers use one of two main approaches: black hat SEO and white hat SEO.
White hat SEO involves following Google's guidelines and creating a long-term strategy that remains effective even after Google updates its algorithms.
Black hat SEO uses unethical techniques to trick Google into ranking your site higher. These methods might work temporarily, but eventually, Google will penalise and possibly blacklist your site.
Here are some examples of black hat techniques:
- Identical content: Copying content from other high-ranking websites.
- Invisible text and keyword stuffing: Hiding keywords in your text by making them the same colour as the background or overloading your content with keywords.
- Cloaking and redirecting: Redirecting users from a high-ranking page to an unrelated or suspicious site.
- Spammy link building: Buying large quantities of low-quality links, like those from services promising thousands of links in a short time.
Google penalises sites that use these tactics, so we at ScaleStation only recommend white hat SEO—techniques that follow search engine guidelines. White hat SEO focuses on quality content, ethical practices, and sustainable strategies.
Grey hat SEO is a middle ground. It's not as ethical as white-hat SEO but not as deceptive as black-hat SEO. Grey hat tactics aim to gain an advantage without outright tricking the system.
Google’s rules can sometimes be unclear or contradictory. For instance, while Google frowns upon guest blogging solely for link building, it can be beneficial if done to grow your brand, build awareness, and drive quality traffic.
In SEO, how you do something is as important as what you do. If you buy guest posts on irrelevant sites and spam links, you’ll be penalised. However, writing valuable guest posts for relevant sites can improve your SEO and drive traffic to your site.
Get Started With SEO with ScaleStation
Now that you understand how SEO works, it's time to put this knowledge into action. At ScaleStation, we specialise in all types of SEO—whether it's on-page, off-page, technical, or more specific strategies like local and mobile SEO. Our team is always ready to help you create a strong SEO plan that aligns with your business goals.
Starting with SEO might seem overwhelming, but you don't have to do it alone. ScaleStation is here to guide you through every step of the process. We cover everything from conducting thorough keyword research and optimising your content to building high-quality backlinks and ensuring your site is technically sound.
Contact us now to learn more about our unique SEO services and how we can tailor a strategy to meet your unique needs.
