Introduction
SEO is the practice of improving your website’s ranking in search engines.
Way back in the heady days of 1996, there weren’t as many websites as there are today.
Way back in the heady days of 1996, there weren’t as many websites as there are today. This was before Google, Bing, or Yahoo; instead, you had to rely on a few search engines that were just getting started. These early search engines didn’t have an easy way to rank websites—they would simply look at keywords and count how many times they appeared on a page.
This meant that it was easy for someone with knowledge about SEO techniques to do well without doing anything else. If you could figure out how each of these early search engines worked (or pay someone else who knew), then you could get higher rankings without having any real content or quality website design.
So a few college students at Stanford University, including one Larry Page, had an idea for a way to rank them by relevance.
You may not know Larry Page and Sergey Brin, but you definitely know their company: Google. In 1997, they were a couple of Stanford University students looking to solve the problem of ranking webpages by relevance. They created a search engine that used the PageRank algorithm to determine the best results for users’ queries. Their idea was revolutionary and came at a time when people were starting to use the internet more and more. The system was so good that it changed how we think about online content today—and in just over 20 years, Google became one of the most powerful companies on Earth.
The original algorithm ranked websites by counting how many links pointed to that site.
The original algorithm ranked websites by counting how many links pointed to that site. The more inbound links you had, the higher your rank. This was great for sites with lots of outbound links (such as Wikipedia), but it didn’t take into account the quality of those inbound links.
Further, because there were no penalties for spammy tactics like comment spam and link farms, it was easy for websites to manipulate their rankings. This allowed people with nefarious intentions to game Google’s search results—and made it pretty difficult for users who wanted trustworthy information from real businesses that specialized in their industry or topic area.
It might seem obvious now, but back then search engines couldn’t easily judge the quality of a website’s content.
Although it might seem obvious now, back then search engines couldn’t easily judge the quality of a website’s content. The algorithm was not perfect, and it wasn’t sophisticated or intelligent enough to be able to tell whether a site had high-quality content or low-quality content.
The Google founders found that inbound links were not only a good way to judge a website’s popularity, but also acted as a reasonable proxy for quality.
The Google founders found that inbound links were not only a good way to judge a website’s popularity, but also acted as a reasonable proxy for quality. When a site receives more inbound links than its peers, it is likely that the site is interesting and useful to other people.
When you search for something online, whether it be information or products, you are looking for the websites that will give you the most relevant results. Google uses this same logic when deciding which sites should appear at the top of your search results: The more inbound links your site has from other websites (and higher quality sites), the more favorably Google will view your website and rank it accordingly.
Then they paired this with other ranking signals like keywords on a page and the use of H1/H2 headers.
Once they had a good idea of how to rank pages and find keywords, they paired this with other ranking signals like keywords on a page and the use of H1/H2 headers.
Then they used internal links to link to other relevant pages on your site, but also external links (also known as backlinks) that link back to your website from other sites that are related to yours. For example, if you were selling shoes online you would want to link out to sites like Zappos or Nordstrom so people could buy your products there too!
The next step was figuring out what kind of content worked best for them by doing A/B testing (where two different versions are tested against each other). They would try different headlines and see which one converted better or had more click-throughs before picking one winner for their homepage as well as specific landing pages within their site.
This eventually all fell under the term of “SEO” (Search Engine Optimization).
The world of SEO has changed dramatically since the early days. Today, there are thousands of moving parts to the process that aren’t easily visible to those looking in from the outside.
To put it simply, SEO is now a long-term strategy rather than a quick fix. You can’t expect to rank highly after just one month or even one year of work; you’ll need to invest time and effort into developing your site on multiple fronts:
- Keywords and link building
- Content creation
- Social media engagement (e.g., Facebook advertising)
While the algorithm has been modified over the years since its invention in 1996, it remains largely unchanged.
The Google search algorithm has been modified over the years since its invention in 1996, but it remains largely unchanged. The algorithm is a black box that determines which websites appear at the top of your search results and how high up they appear.
While much about how Google’s search engine works is kept secret from outsiders, we do know some things about how it functions. First, this complex system relies on many factors when determining your site’s ranking on a particular keyword; second, these factors include relevancy (how closely related each page is to one another), popularity (how many other pages link back to yours), authority (how well-known your website is), user experience (what users like best) and more. Thirdly—and perhaps most importantly—it rewards websites with high-quality content that users enjoy reading or watching!
However, many things have changed with SEO since those early days of search engines.
However, many things have changed with SEO since those early days of search engines but there is always a best SEO company out there. It’s no longer just a matter of getting your website listed among the first few results on Google and Bing. In fact, it can be quite difficult to get your site ranked high enough to be visible at all if you don’t know what you’re doing.
The good news is that there are a variety of strategies that can help you improve your site’s rankings and boost traffic from search engines such as Google or Bing. Marketing experts recommend focusing on long-tail keywords instead of short ones for better results; this means that if someone searches for something specific like “how to make chocolate chip cookies,” they’re more likely to find something relevant than if they just used one word like “chocolate.”
SEO is still a great way to boost traffic to your website
Here are some ways to improve your SEO:
In order to improve your ranking, you need to optimize the content on your site. There are a few ways you can do this, but the two most important things are:
- On-Page Optimization
- Off-Page Optimization
On-Page Optimization includes things like making sure all of your URLs are unique and easy to read, using keywords in titles and meta descriptions, ensuring that every page has at least one internal link back to it (this creates an opportunity for search bots to crawl through more pages), etc. The goal here is not necessarily keyword stuffing or spamming Google with tons of links; it’s about making sure that Google can easily understand what each page is about so they know when they should rank them higher in SERPs.
Off-Page Optimization refers to any activity that improves links between different websites so that Google knows which ones have authority over others. The idea here is similar: if one website links back at another site multiple times with no other sites linking into theirs (and vice versa), then it’s likely because those two sites share some kind of relationship—and therefore should be ranked together by search engines as well!
On-Page Optimization; Off-Page Optimization; Technical SEO
On-Page Optimization
On-page optimization is the process of optimizing the content, structure and code of your website. This includes writing relevant and keyword-rich content, using heading tags that accurately describe what your page is about, publishing frequently updated pages with new information to keep visitors engaged and ensuring your site loads quickly on all devices. On-Page Optimization is an important step in any SEO strategy because it helps search engines understand what you are trying to say when they crawl through your site.
Off Site Optimization: Off Page Optimization refers to factors outside of a website that affect its ranking on search engines like Google or Bing. These include link building strategies (also known as backlinks), social media marketing, guest blogging and more. A strong off-site optimization strategy will improve user experience for customers who visit your site but also play an integral role in increasing traffic from these searches by improving visibility in search engines’ results pages (SERPs).
Technical SEO: Technical SEO refers specifically to technical aspects of web pages that can positively or negatively impact how users interact with them . Some examples include issues related to HTML markup syntax errors causing duplicate content penalties; broken links causing 404 errors preventing visitors from accessing desired resources; slow loading speeds on mobile devices due to poorly coded CSS files etcetera .
You can use SEO to boost traffic to your website.
The second most important thing to understand about SEO is that it can be used to boost traffic to your website. If you’re not familiar with the term, SEO stands for “search engine optimization,” which is a process of optimizing the content, structure and other elements of a website to increase the amount of traffic it receives from search engines. The goal here is simple: get more people visiting your site by improving its ranking in search engines like Google or Bing.
Here are some ways you can use SEO to bring more visitors to your site:
- Use keyword or keyword phrase research as part of planning out how you want to structure what kind of content will live on each page on your site (for example: if someone searches for “how do I build a chair?” that might indicate they’re looking for instructions on how to build chairs). This will help give visitors exactly what they need when they visit your site so there’s no need for them go elsewhere!
- Optimize images with alt tags containing keywords related thematically with their context (“chair” would work well here because we’re talking about chairs). This helps make sure people find what they’re looking for when looking through Google Images results pages instead of having just an empty space where there could’ve been something useful instead!
Conclusion
SEO is a great way to boost traffic to your website.