Introduction to Search Engine Optimization
After your website is published, it doesn’t automatically attract users or become highly visible. The journey to visibility begins with search engine robots or spiders, such as Googlebot, Baiduspider, or Bingbot, visiting your website to discover its content. This process, known as crawling, is the first step in making your site discoverable. Once the content is found, it moves to the indexing stage. Here, your content is processed and stored in the search engine’s massive database, making it potentially accessible to users searching for related information. The next step is ranking. Search engines evaluate your website based on numerous factors, including content quality, user experience, website structure, relevance to search queries, and backlink profile. These rankings are important because they determine your website’s visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) when users search for keywords related to your content. Apart from considering the factors of each website, search engines also look at the context of the search query, including search intent, location, search history, device type, and current events, to determine how they rank websites.
Understanding this process is vital for effective website optimization, which is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes into play. SEO is a set of techniques and practices designed to improve your website’s visibility on SERPs significantly. As an essential digital marketing strategy, SEO helps enhance your online presence, potentially increasing your site’s rankings for relevant searches.
Google dominates the US search engine market with over 90% share, making it our primary focus for SEO strategies. Since 1997, Google has continuously improved its search engine, updating algorithms daily with significant changes every four to six months. To stay informed, monitor core updates and Google’s official communications. While the workings of Google’s complex indexing and ranking systems, including machine learning and deep learning models, are not public, you can gain insights by reading Google’s blog and SEO guidelines. Documents like the Search Quality Rater Guidelines for search quality raters provide a good starting point. Testing websites and using the search console to identify ranking issues is also good practice.
Ranking Factors
CONTENT
STRUCTURE
LINKING
EEAT
METADATA
UX
MOBILE
AI
Content
Creating content never seemed as easy as it is today. Because of the rise of generative artificial intelligence, content creators can use chat applications like Gemini, Copilot, Claude, or ChatGPT to create content. Furthermore, they can also use more specialized tools for content creation, such as Jasper or Copy.ai.
Generative AI makes content research more accessible, but relying solely on AI-generated content is not a good strategy. Search engines like Google don’t penalize AI-generated content, but they look at the effort required to create content. According to a recent API leak on Github, the API documentation confirmed that Google does use an algorithm to measure how long it takes to create content. High-quality content includes original, in-depth articles, news, videos, and information from skilled creators. It must be accurate, comprehensive, clearly communicated, and professionally presented. Where appropriate, it should also reflect expert consensus. High-quality content serves the needs of your target audience.
To determine the quality of content, Google looks at the purpose of each page. Is the page meant to inform? Is it a shopping page? Search engines also look at how recent the content is and how relevant it would be for a specific search query.
EEAT, the content creators’ experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness, and the website they are listed on also play a role in determining content quality. Typically, Your Money, Your Life (YMYL) content has a slight advantage over other types of content. YMYL content influences a person’s health, finances, and life. Examples could be legal information, health tips, or investment advice. Because of its potential high influence, search engines are also more strict in evaluating the quality of this type of content. More in-depth content is usually preferable over short content, but short content can rank, too, if it is high-quality.
Tips
Don’t
Structure
Having a good site structure is essential for your website’s usability. The easier it is for users to find content, the more likely they’ll stay on your website longer. Before building your website, create a site map to organize your content effectively. Once you have determined your site structure, create an intuitive and easy-to-use site navigation, and use breadcrumbs to help users identify where they are on your website.
To help search engines discover your content, you can also submit an XML sitemap to search engines. This helps communicate your site structure to search engines by allowing bots to detect your content. When you install Google Tag Manager, your site will be registered with Search Console, and a sitemap will be submitted.
Internal linking plays a crucial role in improving your site structure as well. Linking to related posts, articles, or products within your site can boost content discoverability, making it easier for users and search engines to find your most important pages. Internal links create pathways that guide users deeper into your site, signaling to search engines the relative importance of different pages. This helps improve SEO and keeps users engaged with your content longer.
Tips
Use a tool like Miro to create a sitemap.
Linking
Creating high-quality backlinks is an essential part of an SEO strategy. Backlinks are links from other websites to yours, which help establish your website’s authority and trustworthiness. The more genuine backlinks your site has, the more visible it becomes to search engines.
To build backlinks, you can focus on creating high-quality content that people naturally want to share.
You can also establish partnerships with other companies for mutual linking. However, it’s important to note that Google prefers organic backlinks over link exchanges. So, while partnerships can work, it’s best to keep them natural and relevant to avoid any potential penalties from Google.
Social media can help in backlink building. Although links from platforms like Facebook or Reddit may be ‘nofollow’ (meaning they don’t pass SEO value directly), they can still drive traffic to a website, increase visibility, and potentially lead to other organic backlinks. Engaging in forums, Q&A platforms (like Quora or Reddit), and industry discussions can also create indirect backlink opportunities by showcasing your expertise and attracting attention to your content.
Getting featured in industry news, being quoted in articles, or having your products reviewed by influencers or experts can lead to high-quality backlinks from trusted sources.
Tips:
Majestic’s Backlink checker or Moz’s free SEO tools can help track backlinks and linking opportunities.
E-E-A-T
The E-E-A-T acronym (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) started gaining attention after a 2018 Google core update. To assess a website owner’s experience level, Google looks for signs that the content creator has actual, hands-on involvement with the topic they’re talking about. This might be someone sharing personal stories, reviews, or first-hand guides that show they’ve done the thing they’re writing about. Think travel bloggers who have been to the places they’re recommending or product reviewers who have used what they’re reviewing. Expertise is about whether the person knows their stuff. Google checks for credentials, qualifications, or anything that shows this person genuinely knows the subject. Expertise can derived from degrees, professional experience, or being referenced by other experts in the field. Google wants to see that the person writing or creating the content has a solid background in the topic.
Finally, trustworthiness is a crucial factor in assessing content creators. Google looks for positive reviews, reliable citations, and high-quality references. Creators can include author boxes and bios and have social media channels with honest recommendations, endorsements, and reviews.
These same factors apply to a website, but the evaluation extends beyond the individual content creator. For the site, the experience can be demonstrated through user-generated reviews or case studies and the authority and expertise of the content creators. Backlinks from other trusted, established, and authoritative websites can establish authority. Site-wide trust is ensured by clear contact information, about us information, transparent policies, and secure connections (HTTPS). The domain age and website metrics also influence the EEAT evaluation of a website. Websites with high traffic, low bounce rates, high engagement, and high conversion rates are more positively viewed. The website’s user experience and overall performance also influence its score. The UX section explains the user experience and performance factors search engines look at.
Tips:
Use tools like Moz’s free SEO tools to track domain authority scores.
METADATA
Metadata is data that provides information about other data. In the context of websites and SEO, it refers to specific pieces of information embedded in the HTML code of a webpage that help search engines and other systems understand the content and purpose of the page. Metadata is not always visible to users but is crucial for search engine indexing and ranking. Metadata includes SEO titles, Meta descriptions, keywords, and snippets users can add to their pages to increase their visibility.
Rich Snippets
Rich snippets use structured data to understand the content on the page and show that content in a richer appearance in search results. You need to add structured data to feature your website in rich snippets. This can be done through a plugin or by getting syntax from schema.org. Google lists an overview of all the rich snippets.
UX
UX refers to the user experience. A good user experience is essential for your visitors and search engines. Web vitals are just one indicator that plays a role in determining user experience. Your website must also be easy to navigate, have a clear purpose, and have no spam or disturbing elements.
Test your site speed: https://pagespeed.web.dev/
Mobile
Mobile SEO is about optimizing your site for mobile devices. It includes having a responsive design, fast loading times, and content that’s easy to navigate on small screens. Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning it prioritizes the mobile version of your site for ranking. Proper mobile optimization improves search visibility and user experience.