Learning the basics of SEO: Why it’s important for your business.

Throughout this guide, you'll delve into the origins of search engines and their integration into our daily routines. Uncover the intricate processes of how platforms such as Google navigate, categorise, and prioritise website content.

Importance of SEO for websites

In today's digital landscape, being found online is so important, did you know there are nearly as many websites as there are people on the planet? Breaking through the clutter poses a growing challenge. Climbing the ranks to reach the first page of search results is becoming more arduous, as internet users are more discerned regarding the content they consume and the websites they engage with. Nevertheless, investing effort in search engine optimisation (SEO) is crucial, as the majority of online journeys commence with a simple search.

Understanding how the internet works

To fully understand the importance of search engine optimisation (SEO) let’s first dive into briefly on how the internet works; in it’s simplest form the internet is an enormous interconnected set of pages connected to each other with links. Think of the internet like a big city, in a town there are houses that we can think of as websites, each room inside the house is like a different page on that website, and the hallway and stairs connecting the different rooms are the internal links between the sites pages. On each street and town, you have different houses, representing lots of different websites. As more and more houses are built and the internet continues to grow, the town expands to become a city. Connecting these houses are roads, which are external links.The roads connect different buildings and neighbourhoods together. 

A big popular website is like a shopping mall, with lots of roads and maybe even a highway leading to it. Not only is it easy to find, there are several different ways to get there. If you know a building’s address, you can drive straight to it. This is like typing the URL of a website. But if you don’t know where the building you want to visit is, you’ll have to go to the town directory or yellow pages to look for it. You use the information you do have about the building to look it up. This is kind of like performing a searching using a search engine. 

This is a brief analogy of the internet and in reality it is way more complex then this. But hopefully this starts to get you thinking about how websites relate to one another and the role that search engines play. 

In the early days of the internet, accessing a website was a cumbersome task. You could only reach a website by directly entering its address or by following a link from another site. However, as the internet expanded and the number of websites multiplied, search engines emerged to simplify web navigation and aid users in discovering desired content more effortlessly.

Before we proceed, a brief message: while there are numerous search engines such as Yahoo and Bing, this course will concentrate solely on Google. This is based on the fact that Google dominates the global search landscape, encompassing over 90% of search queries worldwide.

What is search engine optimisation (SEO)

With the emergence of search engines, the concept of SEO naturally came into existence.

During the infancy of SEO, search engine algorithms were relatively basic and practices like keyword stuffing were widespread. However, as search engines evolved their algorithms grew more sophisticated, prioritising relevance to provide users with more accurate and valuable search results. Ultimately, this aligns with Google's, or any search engine's primary objective.

Their primary focus lies on their users, the searchers, aiming to deliver the optimal experience by presenting them with the most relevant results. To achieve this goal, search engines have continually enhanced their algorithms making them increasingly intelligent. In today's landscape of heightened competition and evolving algorithms SEO serves as the cornerstone for maintaining competitiveness.

In modern SEO practices, striking a balance between prioritising the user experience and ensuring accessibility for search engines is essential. Even with top-notch content, its visibility hinges on the optimisation of your website for search engine crawling. Mastering the fundamentals of SEO, including dos and don'ts, can significantly impact the discoverability of your website and potentially determining its success or failure in the digital realm.

What do search engines look for?

At its core, Google places significant emphasis on E-A-T: expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. These factors not only apply to the content of a webpage but also extend to the website itself and the credibility of its creators. Pages with low E-A-T are unlikely to rank for valuable keywords. E-A-T serves as a valuable guiding principle for both SEO strategies and the development of high-quality content that effectively addresses the questions and problems of searchers.

Focus on the long term 

Beyond E-A-T, the realm of SEO encompasses a wide range of tactics and strategies, making it challenging to find which ones will yield optimal results for your specific needs. It's important to know that SEO is an ongoing and cumulative process, devoid of any quick fixes or one-size-fits-all solutions. The success of an SEO strategy varies significantly across different companies, as ranking signals impact websites differently based on factors such as their expertise, content strategy, and the nature of searches they attract. Furthermore, it's important to understand that SEO isn't a short-term tactic but rather a long-term strategy. Achieving organic rankings requires patience and persistence, underscoring the importance of initiating SEO efforts at the earliest opportunity.

How do search engines rank your content?

Let's delve into finding the SEO approach that aligns with your business requirements and unravel the crucial question of how search engines evaluate your content for ranking.

The cornerstone of achieving favourable search engine rankings lies in comprehending how Google discovers, evaluates, and prioritises your content. Elevating your content's visibility in search results hinges primarily on two core elements:

• Enhancing discovery and relevance: This entails creating a wealth of high-quality content centered around the topics you aim to establish expertise in.

• Establishing authority: Building credibility and authority is accomplished through acquiring numerous high-quality backlinks to your website.

Discovery, relevance, and authority encapsulate the fundamental stages of how search engines operate. Each of these stages aligns with a corresponding action undertaken by the search engine: crawling, indexing, and ranking, respectively.

Discovery Phase

In the first stage, known as the discovery phase, search engine crawlers traverse your web page, a process referred to as crawling. Here, the bot simply locates your page and meticulously records all its contents.

Relevancy Stage

Moving on to the relevancy stage, after discovering your content, the search engine bot assesses its relevance to specific search queries by indexing it. This indexing process relies on various signals, including keywords, to determine relevance.

Authority Stage

Finally, in the authority stage, the focus shifts to establishing credibility through factors such as backlinks. By accumulating sufficient authority, your site earns recognition from search engines as authoritative, thereby enhancing its likelihood of ranking prominently in search results.

Authority plays a pivotal role in determining the strength of a website's ranking. To illustrate how search engines rank content, let's turn to the library metaphor, as Google essentially functions as a colossal library. Imagine yourself as a librarian tasked with organising a heap of books. Your objective is to determine where each book should be placed within the library. This scenario closely mirrors how Google finds, analyses, and ranks content. Just as you assess the relevance and authority of each book to decide its placement in the library, Google evaluates the relevance, credibility, and authority of web pages to determine their position in search results.

How google finds, analyses and ranks content

Crawling/Discovery

Just like finding books in a library, the first step in the search engine process is crawling or discovery. If a book isn't in the stack or isn't visible to the librarian, it can't be organised on a shelf. Similarly, for a website, it's crucial to have content accessible to search engines. If search engines can't access a piece of content on your website, it won't be considered for ranking in search results. This underscores the importance of ensuring that all content is easily discoverable by search engine crawlers.

Indexing

Indexing is akin to categorising books in a library. Just as you would assess the relevance of a book to a particular topic by examining its title, contents, authorship, and subject matter, search engine bots analyse web page content to determine its meaning and relevance. By crawling the content, they ascertain "what are the contents of this web page?" and categorize them into relevant topics. This process involves creating semantic associations between different pieces of content, much like organising books into thematic sections in a library.

Ranking/Authority

The final step, ranking, involves determining which books deserve prominence, akin to showcasing bestsellers or making certain books easier to find in a library. In this stage, determining authority is paramount. But evaluating authority is subjective and multifaceted. Just as in a library, where you might consider the reputation of the author or publisher, in the digital realm, search engines assess factors like backlinks, content quality, and user engagement metrics to gauge authority. Ultimately, the goal of Google is to present users with the most credible and relevant content in search results.

These three stages and actions are dependant on one another. If your content isn’t relevant then it has little chance of ranking no matter how authoritative it is. If you website isn’t authoritative then it has little chance of ranking no matter how relevant it is. Finally if your website can’t be discovered in the first place then it has no chance of ranking at all.