SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the practice of optimizing websites and their content to increase the quantity and quality of traffic to a website from search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.
The goal of SEO is to improve the visibility of a website or a web page in search engine results pages (SERPs). This is achieved through a combination of on-page and off-page optimization techniques, such as optimizing content, using relevant keywords, building high-quality backlinks, improving website speed and mobile-friendliness, and more.
By improving a website's SEO, it can rank higher in search engine results, which can drive more organic traffic to the website. This can ultimately lead to more conversions, revenue, and business growth.
Types of SEO
There are three types of SEO:
Technical SEO: Optimizing the technical aspects of a website.
On-site SEO: Optimizing the content on a website for users and search engines.
Off-site SEO: Creating brand assets (e.g., people, marks, values, vision, slogans, catchphrases, colors) and doing things that will ultimately enhance brand awareness and recognition (i.e., demonstrating and growing its expertise, authority and trustworthiness) and demand generation.
You maintain 100% control over content and technical optimizations. That’s not always true with off-site (you can’t control links from other sites or if platforms you rely on end up shutting down or making a major change), but those activities are still a key part of this SEO trinity of success.
Imagine SEO as a sports team. You need both a strong offense and defense to win – and you need fans (a.k.a., an audience). Think of technical optimization as your defense, content optimization as your offense, and off-site optimization as ways to attract, engage and retain a loyal fanbase.
Technical optimization
Optimizing the technical elements of a website is crucial and fundamental for SEO success.
It all starts with architecture – creating a website that can be crawled and indexed by search engines. As Gary Illyes, Google’s trends analyst, once put it in a Reddit AMA: “MAKE THAT DAMN SITE CRAWLABLE.”
You want to make it easy for search engines to discover and access all of the content on your pages (i.e., text, images, videos). What technical elements matter here: URL structure, navigation, internal linking, and more.
Experience is also a critical element of technical optimization. Search engines stress the importance of pages that load quickly and provide a good user experience. Elements such as Core Web Vitals, mobile-friendliness and usability, HTTPS, and avoiding intrusive interstitials all matter in technical SEO.
Another area of technical optimization is structured data (a.k.a., schema). Adding this code to your website can help search engines better understand your content and enhance your appearance in the search results.
Plus, web hosting services, CMS (content management system) and site security all play a role in SEO.
Content optimization
In SEO, your content needs to be optimized for two primary audiences: people and search engines. What this means is that you optimize the content your audience will see (what’s actually on the page) as well as what search engines will see (the code).
The goal, always, is to publish helpful, high-quality content. You can do this through a combination of understanding your audience’s wants and needs, data and guidance provided by Google.
When optimizing content for people, you should make sure it:
Covers relevant topics with which you have experience or expertise.
Includes keywords people would use to find the content.
Is unique or original.
Is well-written and free of grammatical and spelling errors.
Is up to date, containing accurate information.
Includes multimedia (e.g., images, videos).
Is better than your SERP competitors.
Is readable – structured to make it easy for people to understand the information you’re sharing (think: subheadings, paragraph length, use bolding/italics, ordered/unordered lists, reading level, etc.).
For search engines, some key content elements to optimize for are:
Title tags
Meta description
Header tags (H1-H6)
Image alt text
Open graph and Twitter Cards metadata
Off-site optimization
There are several activities that may not be “SEO” in the strictest sense, but nonetheless can align with and help contribute indirectly to SEO success.
Link building (the process of acquiring links to a website) is the activity most associated with off-site SEO. There can be great benefits (e.g., rankings, traffic) from getting a diverse number of links pointing at your website from relevant, authoritative, trusted websites. Link quality beats link quantity – and a large quantity of quality links is the goal.
And how do you get those links? There are a variety of website promotion methods that synergize with SEO efforts. These include:
Brand building and brand marketing: Techniques designed to boost recognition and reputation.
PR: Public relations techniques designed to earn editorially-given links.
Content marketing: Some popular forms include creating videos, ebooks, research studies, podcasts (or being a guest on other podcasts) and guest posting (or guest blogging).
Social media marketing and optimization: Claim your brand’s handle on any and all relevant platforms, optimize it fully and share relevant content.
Listing management: Claiming, verifying and optimizing the information on any platforms where information about your company or website may be listed and found by searchers (e.g., directories, review sites, wikis).
Ratings and reviews: Getting them, monitoring them and responding to them.
Generally, when talking about off-site, you’re talking about activities that are not going to directly impact your ability to rank from a purely technical standpoint.
However, again, everything your brand does matters. You want your brand to be found anywhere people may search for you. As such, some people have tried to rebrand “search engine optimization” to actually mean “search experience optimization” or “search everywhere optimization.”