Welcome to your SEO learning journey

The world of search engine optimization is very complex and ever-changing. SEO
stands for “search engine optimization” and it is the practice of increasing both the
quantity and quality of a website traffic, as well as exposure to your brand, through
non-paid search engine results. Non-paid search is also known as organic search.

Despite the acronym, search engine optimization is as much about people as it is

about search engines themselves. It’s all about understanding what people are
searching for online, the answers they are seeking, the words they’re using, and the
type of content they wish to consume. Knowing the answers to these questions will
permit you to connect to the people who are searching online for the solutions you
offer. If knowing your intention of audience is one side of the SEO coin, delivering
it in a way search engine crawlers can find and understand is the other.

Search engine basics

Search engines are answer machines. They scour billions of pieces of content and
evaluate thousands of factors to determine which content is most likely to answer
your query (questions).

Search engines do all of this by discovering and classifying all available content on
the Internet (web pages, PDFs, images, videos, etc.) via a process known as
“crawling and indexing,” and then ordering it by how well it matches with the
query in a process we refer to as “ranking.”

Why SEO is important

While paid advertising, social media, and other online platforms can generate
traffic to the websites, the majority of online traffic is driven by search engines.

Organic search results which are also called non paid search covers more digital
real estate, appears more reliable to the savvy searchers, and receive way more
clicks than paid advertisements.

SEO is one of the online marketing channels that, when set up correctly, can
continue to pay dividends over time. If you provide a solid piece of content which
deserves to the rank for the right keywords, then your traffic to site can snowball
over time, whereas advertising needs continuous funding to send traffic to your
site.

Search engines are getting smarter, but they still need our help.

Optimizing your website will help you to provide better information to search
engines so that your content can be properly indexed and displayed within the
search results.

White hat vs. black hat SEO

The White hat SEO refers to SEO techniques, best practices, and strategies that
abide by search engine rule, it’s primary focus is to provide more value to people.

Black hat SEO refers to the techniques and strategies that attempt to spam/fool
search engines. While black hat SEO can work, it puts websites at huge risk of
being penalized and/or de-indexed (removed from search results) and has ethical
implications.

Penalized websites have bankrupted businesses. It's just another reason to be very
careful while choosing an SEO expert or agency.

Setting (and eventually achieving) the right goal is one of the most important
things you can do as an SEO. SEO accomplishes so much more than vanity
metrics. When done well, it helps real businesses achieve real goals for their
success.