What is SEO and How Does it Work?
in this video we'll learn what SEO is how does it work and how you can perform search engine optimization on your website to increase the probability of your website ranking higher in the search results before understanding SEO we need to understand how search engines work so we can understand how to optimize our websites search engines scour the web and index all the information they can find from every website and every single page they can find they organize all this information in their index think of it as a large filing cabinet where they store all this information where they find it from every single website and page that they find when someone makes a search Google and other search engines return the pages they think are the most relevant for the query an SEO or search engine optimization is the process of optimizing your website so it ranks the highest for queries that are relevant for your website now that you understand how search engines work and what SEO is you can already start painting a picture and understanding what factors is SEO dependent on SEO is dependent on mainly three factors first what a user searches for which can also be keywords or a query what is the goal of that search which means the search intent behind the search and the third factor is does Google think your website can fulfill that goal of the user if you read Google's official page which describes how they rank pages and websites they mention technically five factors namely meaning relevance quality usability and context but the same factors can be distilled down to the same three factors that I just mentioned above so let's discuss each of these factors individually to understand how we can Implement those improve upon those to increase our chances of ranking high in the search results and technically implementing SEO on our website the first and the most important factor when it comes to understanding SEO is keywords whenever people search on search engines they use keywords and phrases to find the information they're looking for to maximize the number of people discovering your website through search engines you must research all the relevant keywords that your audience might be searching and create content around it let's take a practical example if you're in the business of selling barbecue grills your potential customers will do plenty of research to find out which barbecue grill is right for them by creating content around all these topics you'll maximize the chances of your business and website being discovered in these search results but before you can do that you need to find out all the keywords that your potential customers are looking for right there are plenty of ways to do that and one of the easiest and fastest ways to do that is to use specialized tools designed for keyword research let's go to Google and make a search ourselves I'll search for WB beginners keyword generator tool which is a free tool available to you to do some keyword research to understand what users can search for when they're looking for information around your products and services once the tool is open I'll enter the word barbecue in the tool and make a search in just a few seconds the tool generates hundreds of keywords related to barbecue for me to use it generates keywords using suggested search prepositions and even questions around the subject that you can create content for this already is a great starting point and if you want to take the keyword research process even further you can take any of these keywords and repeat the process with the same tool and generate even more keywords to create content for but you might also be noticing that many of these keywords aren't something that your ideal customer will search for when they're deciding to purchase a barbecue grill which brings us to the next thing you should consider with any keyword search intent people search on search engin to find information and there's always an intent behind a particular search let's take a practical example by going back to our barbecue search if I just search for the word barbecue in Google I can either be looking to buy a barbecue or looking for a barbecue restaurant the intent isn't clear so Google gives me a mixed bag of results a restaurant as a top listing some questions around barbecuing some barbecue restaurants around me then some list based articles which cover the best barbecue restaurants in my city by covering all the intents Google is giving me the choice to click on the information I think is most relevant with my search now let's change the query and see how Google can predict the intent with just a few keywords and a search if I change my search from barbecue to barbecue grill the intent immediately changes so Google instead of showing me a mixed pack of results now primarily shows me shopping page where I can buy a barbecue grill the intent has changed now if I change the search once again to how to clean a barbecue grill the intent again changes so I get presented with a snippet based result some people also ask results and other information articles on actually how to clean a grill and if I change my query once again to barbecue unboxing most results that I'll see will be video based results as most people searching for unboxing have an intent to watch a video about the topic rather than read an article so hopefully now you see how keywords and intent form a powerful combination which you can leverage to create content that gives your website a higher chance of ranking in these search results but there's another set of factors you must consider before your website can rank highest in the search results I'm talking about quality and usability if you remember the official Google resource I shared which mentions how search algorithms work it listed five factors that search engines look for and the algorithm takes into account before ranking a website those five factors are meaning relevance quality usability and context I've already covered meaning relevance and context with the factors I've discussed but let's talk about the quality and usability aspect as they also have a huge impact on the performance of your website just because you've written a piece of content around a particular subject doesn't mean Google will rank it higher in the search results Google and other search engines are in the business of giving the users the best experience possible which means ranking the website with the highest quality content highest in these search results and Google uses their Advanced machine learning models to determine the quality of information on a website the more in-depth the content is and the more it answers the reader questions the higher quality the content is rated at for certain topics namely finance and health related content Google holds an even higher standard for the qu quality of content it ranks in these search results as the content can and does have a huge impact on the reader life so now after understanding all these factors the question is how do you write high quality content well the answer is eat let me explain not so long ago Google released a set of guidelines that they look for in quality content to make sure that they can rank the highest quality content in the search results the abbreviation for the guidelines is eat with a double e what does it stand for to explain it in the simp simplest way possible your website should showcase your experience your expertise your Authority and trustworthiness if your content can fulfill all these criteria while also answering your reader question then you'll rate highly in the quality Department another important factor to keep in mind is usability which simply translates to what kind of experience does your website provide to your users optimizing simple things like having a friendly design which is optimized for all kinds of devices mobile tablets and even bigger devices fast load times readable text and showing prominent information in the right places will take you High in the usability department in simple words the quality Factor deals with the quality of information on your website while the usability factor deals with the quality of experience your website provides to your users both are important to achieve higher rankings in the search results but here's the catch even if you create high quality content on your website and you have great usability on your website site it might not be enough to rank high in these search results because what we're looking at is just one half of the coin the other half of the coin which you need to understand to understand the complete picture of SEO is off page SEO till now whatever we discussed from an SEO perspective related only to your website and what content you create but that's only half the picture SEO can be divided into two distinct categories on page SEO and off page SEO on page SEO is what we've been discussing till now it covers everything that you can do on your website and on your pages to make sure Google sees your website with favorable eyes the other part of the equation is off-page SEO it can be tricky to understand so let me offer an analogy if you opened an electronic store in your local area you'd want your potential customers to have the best experience possible right so you'll make sure to stock the best Goods keep the shop clean smelling good have trained staff offer competive price PR Ing and offer great customer service that is the equivalent of onpage SEO because these are the things you are doing inside your business off-page SEO is everything that you can do outside your business location for your business for your electronics business you'd want to be a part of the community events sponsor the sports leagues and try to get coverage in the local media basically off-page SEO is all about discoverability and reputation off-page SEO for websites basically translates to that if other websites talk about you this can mean links from other websites mentions in reputed media with the rise of social media having an active account on most popular platforms is also mandatory another thing to consider are reviews on websites like Yelp and other platforms especially for business websites so basically that's what SEO and search engine optimization is if you have any questions leave it in the comments thanks for watching make sure to subscribe before you go
