What is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process or technique to optimize a website to rank high or improve rankings in search engines like the Google, bing, Yahoo etc. The techniques of improving the rankings of a website by SEO may vary from search engine to search engine – depending on the rules and algorithm of the search company.

Normally, as long as a website goes live and available on the world wide web, the search engines’ spiders will automatically crawl and index its pages into their database and URL(s) of the website can be seen on those search engines. However, to rank high in search engines you have to follow certain rules and techniques.

In this SEO tutorial, you will learn in detail what SEO is all about along with techniques, tips and popular Google updates like the panda, penguin etc.

Why doing SEO?

Imagine a case of a departmental store which is full of different products. The products of many brands are filled and the staff is very friendly to guide the customers as well. In Short, after visiting this store, you can rate it as a great place to shop stuff. What about its location?

Let us say, the commercial area where this store is located also has nine other departmental stores with similar kind of products. From the entry point, the example departmental store is located at number eight. Now imagine, you are a new person in town and visit that commercial area to buy something from a departmental store. Most probably where you will enter?

The store which is located first, second, third or which one? You may enter the example store, which is the number eight, however, practically this may be less than 5 out of hundred customers, is not it? Most customers will go to first, then second, third and so on.

Now look at the search engine, for example, google.com. You want to buy a product e.g. a mobile phone. Enter its model with vendor name and google will return hundreds of pages as a result of the search query.

You are on the first page, by default, that lists top 10 stores or websites. Where will you click as a customer? You most probably will click the first URL, second or third. A few visitors with the same query may go to the last results – 9^th or 10^th or move to the second page of search results. However, studies say that most visitors will click the first to third results and only a few 9^th to 10^th number results.

What it means is most visitors or search traffic is going to the top located stores’ websites. The traffic a store gets means more chances to sell products and that means more business. What should low ranked business sites should do to rank on top of the search page?

The process or techniques that can bring their website on top is called search engine optimization or in short SEO.

Importance of Search Engines

As more and more people across the world use search engines, especially Google, Yahoo or bing (where google is on top or you can say the market leader in search sector) for any kind of information relating to different aspects of life. Whether it is related to shopping stuff, education, entertainment, finance or you name it – search engines get billions of search queries every day to find useful information in all sectors. The websites that are on top for the specific category may get a big amount of web traffic. On that basis companies with hundreds of employees are established with big profits.

Many companies or businesses that have physical existence are unable to ignore web presence as more and more people first search through the internet. To be found on the internet means you have to rank high on search engines and that means better SEO than your competitors.

As search market is grown in billions (financially) over the period of time in various sectors. To get benefit in your niche or sector, you have to rank high in search engines. Although there are other sources to get web traffic like paid searches, social media or other sources. We will only cover search engine optimization in this tutorial series.

Over the period of around 15+ years, the SEO is incredibly evolved. From basic SEO tactics like meta tags (Title, keywords etc.), headings it has moved to advanced tactics that involve better keyword research, keyword density, avoiding algorithm update penalties like the panda, penguin, site layout etc.

With the increase of mobile / smartphone usage and more searches from mobile devices than desktop – SEO for mobile devices has also got importance.

In this tutorial, we will cover basic to advanced topics related to SEO.

Table of content

How search engine works?

Meta tags

Title tag

Keywords

Headings (h1 to h6)

Keyword research and density

Google penalties

Google panda

Google penguin

Google mobile Algo

Google pigeon