What is SEO? Complete Guide to Learn SEO [2024]

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is also an acronym that is used for Search Engine Optimizers who are people who practice the process of SEO. 

Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving the organic presence of a website in search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yandex, Baidu, and others. 

SEO is a part of digital marketing. There are several channels included under digital marketing like SEO, PPC, Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, and Affiliate Marketing. 

I have been practicing SEO since 2009. I have divided this SEO guide to learn what is SEO into 19 different chapters that discuss every part of SEO in complete detail. 

Chapter #1: Definition of SEO

Let’s start by learning the definition of SEO. 

SEO is defined as the process of improving the organic visibility of a website or app in the search engines to generate higher engagement and increase business profits. 

Google and other search engines use a special ranking algorithm to rank websites in the search results based on the relevancy and popularity of the website. 

SEO understands the search ranking algorithm, performs comprehensive keyword research, and optimizes the website by increasing the relevancy and popularity scores of a website. An optimized site ranks higher in the organic search results.

Chapter #2: How Search Engine Works?

The job of a search engine is to return the best results to the user based on the search query. 

For example, if the user enters “how to prepare a chocolate truffle cake” then the search engine must return the exact recipe of a chocolate truffle cake and also the best one. It shouldn’t return irrelevant results like that of a vanilla cake or average recipes that haven’t received good feedback. 

To return the best results to the searcher, the search engines use an algorithm (a computer program) known as the search engine ranking algorithm. There are over 200 ranking factors used by the search engines. Sites are ranked based on these ranking factors. 

The most important ranking factors that the majority of search engines use are relevancy, popularity, and user experience. 

• Relevancy is decided on the basis of how closely the site content matches with the information that the searcher is looking for. 
• Popularity is decided on the basis of links. The higher the number of quality inbound links a domain has, the higher are the chances of its ranking at the top of the search results. Backlinks are by far the most important ranking factor used by the search engines. 
• User experience is calculated by analyzing the technical aspects of the site like the responsiveness of the site, the ease of navigation, the number of ads displayed on the site and whether these ads hamper the experience of the user, the use of HTTPS for the safety of the information shared by the site visitors, the loading time of the site, and other factors. 

Chapter #3: Who is a Search Engine Optimizer?

A search engine optimizer is a person who optimizes a website or app in terms of relevancy, popularity, and user experience. 

The job of a search engine optimizer is to acquire higher organic rankings in the search results for search queries that can drive engagement, branding, and conversions to business. 

There is no special degree that is required to become a search engine optimizer. You can become an SEO after completing your bachelor’s degree in any stream but IT, computer science, or marketing degrees are preferred. 

Chapter #4: What Are The Responsibilities of an SEO?

The responsibilities of an SEO are:

• Performing keyword research to identify the best search queries for any business.
• Conducting a technical SEO audit to identify the issues related to user experience and optimizing them.
• Understanding how search engines work and keeping up to date with all the latest updates that a search engine applies to its ranking algorithm.
• Conducting SEO competitor analysis to understand the competitor’s SEO strategies. 
• Acquiring the highest quality links to any website.
• Networking with other webmasters in the niche for affiliate brand promotion.
• Performing A/B testing to fix the issues related to conversions and to increase the number of sales for a business.
• Applying conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategies to increase the flow of leads and sales.
• Improving the quality of content on the site.
• Setting up proper analytics code to track the activity of visitors on a website or app.
• Measuring the performance of a website or app and applying SEO friendly strategies to increase traffic, app installs, leads, and conversions.

Chapter #5: What is ON Page SEO?

ON Page SEO or ON page optimization is a method that is aimed to optimize the web pages on a website to increase the relevancy score. 

Optimized web pages have higher chances of ranking organically on the first page of the search results. 

ON Page SEO consists of activities that you can directly control because these activities are done on a site you have control over. 

The following activities are performed under ON page optimization:

• Perform keyword research to find the best keywords in the industry.
• Making sure the site can be crawled and indexed easily by the search engines.
• Identifying and optimizing the title tags, description tags, and H1 tags of all the important webpages. 
• Optimizing the content to improve the relevancy score. This includes adding proper internal links, improving the reading score, correcting the grammar, improving the accuracy of content, updating the content to keep it fresh, etc. 
• Addition of proper internal links to improve the link score of all the important inner pages of the site.
• Keeping the URL structure user friendly. For example, if a web page listing iPhones have an irrelevant URL having numbers in them like www.mysite.com/7889 is changed to www.mysite.com/-iphones. People reading the URL should get an idea of what the page is about. 
• Addition of keywords in the important areas of content like the page title, H1s, subheadings, and alt tags.
• Optimizing the images on the site so that relevant alt text is present in all the images.
• Improving the UX (user experience) of the webpage.
• Increasing the loading time of the website.
• Making the site responsive so that the site is able to load irrespective of the device used to access it. 
• Adding proper schema markups so that the search engines are able to understand the contents of the site in a better manner. 

Chapter #6: What is Off-Page SEO?

Off-Page SEO is a method that is aimed at acquiring links to a website or a web page. Off-Page SEO is primarily focused on link building. These methods help to improve the popularity of a website which is one of the two most important factors for ranking highly in the organic search results.

Off-Page SEO consists of activities that you can’t directly control because these activities are done on a site other than yours.

The following activities are performed under OFF Page optimization:

• Acquiring links to a website using strategies like guest posting and content marketing.
• Social media marketing to increase the number of social shares for promoted content.
• Acquiring brand mentions and citations for a website on social media platforms, forums, or QA platforms.
• Influencer marketing activities to improve the overall branding of the business (or the domain).
• Generating positive reviews and recommendations.
• Acquiring comments to a blog post.

Chapter #7: White Hat, Black Hat, and Grey Hat SEO

SEO practitioners are divided into three categories namely White Hat SEO, Black Hat SEO, and Grey Hat SEO. 

SEO professionals who follow all the guidelines issued by the search engines while optimizing a website are known as White Hat SEO professionals and the process is known as White Hat SEO. 

SEO professionals who try to manipulate the search engine ranking algorithm by practicing strategies that are banned by the search engines are known as Black Hat SEO professionals and the process is known as Black Hat SEO. 

SEO professionals who follow a mix of both White Hat and Black Hat SEO strategies while optimizing a website are known as Grey Hat SEO professionals and the process is known as Grey Hat SEO. 

Most of the SEO professionals who practice SEO fall under the Grey Hat SEO category. 

Chapter #8: What is Link Building?

Link building is the most important part of OFF page SEO. 

Link building is the process of acquiring quality and relevant links to a website to improve the popularity of a domain. 

Metrics such as DA (Domain Authority), Moz Spam Score, SEMrush Authority Score, and Ahrefs Domain Rating are used to determine the quality of the domain. 

DA should be high, Moz Spam Score should be low, SEMrush Authority Score and Ahrefs Domain Rating should be high. 

Acquired links can be of two types namely dofollow and nofollow. 

Dofollow links are those links that pass the full value of the domain whereas Nofollow links are links that do not pass the full value of the domain.

The quality of the domain and the type of link plays the most important role in determining the link score. 

Chapter #9: Brief Overview of Search Engine Ranking Algorithm

The most interesting part of learning SEO is understanding the search engine ranking algorithm. 

The search engine ranking algorithm consists of 200+ different ranking factors that are considered the major ranking factors. However, there are several other new factors that are added every day. Yes, you read that right, every day. This is the reason organic rankings of a website keeps on fluctuating. 

The most important ranking factors are:

• User experience: Google loves to rank sites higher up in the search results that offer a great user experience. Faster site speed, easy navigation, no unnecessary pop-ups, no spam content, no spam ads are all factors that contribute to good user experience.
• Links: As suggested earlier, links are the most important ranking factor out of all the factors that Google uses in its ranking algorithm. Links are counted as a vote to your site, the more votes your site has, the higher it will rank in the search results.
• Technical SEO: Google and other search engines need to index the contents of your site and understand it before it can rank it. Technical SEO helps search engines to better understand your website.
• Content: Any site ranks on the search engines because of good content. If the content on your site is unique that no other web page has on a particular topic then Google will consider this and rank it higher in the search results. Your content should help the reader and should be the best content on the entire web on the topic. 

Chapter #10: How to Optimize a Website?

Now, we come to the most important chapter in learning SEO. Optimizing a website requires a lot of steps and patience. The process of optimizing a website is divided into two main parts:

Part 1: Perform Technical SEO – To perform technical SEO, you need to follow the technical SEO checklist as suggested in chapter 11.

Part 2: Acquire Links – Implement all the strategies suggested in Chapter 12 to acquire the best quality links to your site.

Chapter #11: Technical SEO Checklist

The technical SEO checklist consists of the following:

• Create SEO friendly URLs that are easy to read and understand.
• Have easy navigation on the site such that every link is no longer than three clicks away.
• The speed of the site should be good. You can check it with the help of Google Page Speed Insights.
• Check and fix any broken links on the site using tools like Screaming Frog SEO Spider.
• Optimize the meta tags, title tags, and heading tags.
• Check and fix any unnecessary redirects.
• Optimize the images and content on the site.
• Add Nofollow tag to outbound links that are user-generated and not editorially added.
• Check whether the robots.txt file is set up correctly.
• Inclusion of your target keyword in the title, URL, heading, and first paragraph of the content.
• Optimize the internal linking of the site so that all the important pages receive the maximum link value.
• Identify and fix issues on the site as suggested by the Google Search Console and Google Analytics.
• Add proper rich snippets and metadata to the site so that the search engines are able to understand your site content.
• Set up proper goals in Google Analytics so that all the KPIs are tracked regularly.
• Make sure there are no indexing issues on the site.
• Set up Google alerts so that you stay on top of all the issues at any point in time.

Chapter #12: Top Strategies For Doing SEO

The top strategies for doing SEO are:

• Research the best keywords for your business.
• Analyze the websites that are ranking on top for those keywords.
• Check the quality of content like the number of words, the readability score, the Grammarly score of the content. 
• Identify the number of links pointing to the top domains ranking for those keywords.
• Create better quality of content (it should be unique than the other competitors who are already ranking on top).
• Acquire links to your content. 
• Add internal links to your content.
• Use social media marketing strategies to generate social media shares for your content.
• Take the help of influencers to share your content with their followers.
• Continue following the same SEO strategy for every piece of content you create targeting a group of keywords or a seed keyword.

Chapter #13: Best Strategies For Link Building

Methods that are used for link building are: 

• Directory Submission: You find niche and local directories that can list your website. 
• Guest Posting: One of the best methods of link building is guest posting. Under guest posting, you find webmasters looking for contributors to write articles on their website. You apply, become a contributor, and publish an article with a link back to your own site either in the author’s bio or in the content body.
• Forum Posting: You register on a niche forum site and become a regular contributor. You get a link either from the signature of your profile or from the answers that you write.
• Q&A Posting: Similar to Q&A posting, you register on a niche Q&A site and become a contributor. You gain a link from the answers that you write to help the users.
• Press Release: These are brand advertisements that specifically talk about your business and gives a backlink to your site.
• Content Marketing: One of the most white-hat friendly ways of getting a backlink is via content marketing. Under content marketing, you prepare content and post them on your website. People link back to it naturally because they like your content and gain value from it.

Chapter #14: Content Marketing and SEO

Content marketing is the most important aspect of SEO. All you need is good content to rank your site in the search engines. 

Content marketing is a collection of strategies that you use to promote your business using distinctive pieces of content.

The below strategies are used in content marketing to boost SEO:

• Set different KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to analyze the value of your content marketing campaign.
• Decide on the different types of content to produce like text, audio, video, image, infographics, etc.
• Create a content marketing calendar to prepare the decided content.
• Optimize the content to make it SEO friendly.
• Publish the content pieces on the assigned date.
• Start acquiring links to the published content.

Chapter #15: Top SEO Tools to Optimize Your Website

The best SEO tools to optimize your website are:

• Google Search Console: A free tool offered by Google that tells you any indexation issues your site might have, the search queries your site is currently ranking for, the number of clicks it receives, the number of links it has acquired, etc.
• Google Analytics: A free tool offered by Google that tells you the percentage and number of visitors your site gets each day, the location of your site traffic, the pages receiving the maximum traffic, the number of conversions happening on your site, etc.
• Bing Webmaster Tools: Another free tool offered by Microsoft Bing that offers you all the details to improve the performance of your site in the search engines.
• Google Keyword Planner: A free tool that you can use to identify the best keywords for your SEO campaign. It tells you the search volume of every keyword as per the search location. 
• Screaming Frog: A basic SEO crawler tool that you can use to identify issues on your site like broken links, missing title tags, missing descriptions, missing H1 tags, and other technical SEO stuffs.
• SEMrush: The master SEO tool that is paid but it offers you tons of relevant information to properly optimize your site. You can read a complete review of SEMrush and the feature it offers.
• Ubersuggest: Really useful SEO tool that can be used for keyword research and doing a competitor analysis for SEO. You can read about the Ubersuggest SEO tool here.

Chapter #16: Google Guidelines to Build a User-Friendly Site

Matt Jackson advises that if you want to rank well in Google over a long period of time, that you should keep your strategy inline with their Webmaster guidelines. These criteria include building a fast-loading and user-friendly website. 

If your business website has a quick response time and is easy to navigate, online users will likely engage and keep returning. In addition, it’d encourage them to find more information about your products or services, increasing your chances of winning their trust. 

But search engine guidelines aren’t permanent. They rapidly change, so it’s important to stay up-to-date to ensure the continuity of business presence. So, what are the up-to-date things you need to know about making a website user-friendly?

As per Google, here are the things that you need to do to build a Google-friendly site:

• Offer high-quality content on your website because this is the most important element for ranking. If you are offering content that is useful for your readers and that content is unique that no one else is offering then it will naturally attract many visitors.
• Links are counted as votes by Google. The maximum votes you have for your site from domains that already have a lot of votes then Google sees your content as very important.
• Follow a logical link structure to build your website.
• Avoid doorway pages, keyword stuffing, cloaking, unnatural linking because all these activities can land your site into trouble.
• Make sure Google is able to find your website easily. Submit a sitemap to Google.
• Create pages that accurately describe your content.
• Don’t allow hackers to ruin your website and remove all forms of user-generated spam from your site.

Chapter #17: SEO Vs PPC

Both SEO and PPC are channels of digital marketing. 

The difference between SEO and PPC is as follows:

• SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization while PPC stands for Pay Per Click ads.
• Sites ranking via PPC are known as inorganic listings while site ranking via SEO is known as organic listings.
• SEO helps a site to rank organically in the search results while PPC helps a site to rank after payment to the search engines.
• Your site stops ranking as soon as you stop paying for your PPC ads while your site continues to rank even after you stop paying for your SEO services.
• The cost of PPC is higher when compared with the cost of SEO.
• Sites ranking organically via SEO are trusted more by the people as compared to the sites listed as ads.

A good combination of SEO and PPC strategies can help boost your business’s online presence. SEO is a long-term digital marketing strategy that aims to generate organic traffic, whereas PPC is a short-term solution that can drive instant sales to your business. Therefore, implementing SEO and PPC can make your search engine ranking and sales lean toward a positive trend. 

Chapter #18: SEO Salary 

SEO is a high paying job only after you have acquired the right skills. As every business of this world is moving online especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for expert SEO professionals has surged.  In addition, hiring an SEO expert is advisable for any startup, allowing their in-house marketing team to learn the ins and outs of SEO to widen their reach, resulting in more conversions.

The average salary of an SEO professional are as follows:

• SEO Intern – Over 40,000 per year
• SEO Specialist – Over $50,000 per year
• SEO Manager – Over $70,000 per year
• Director of SEO – Over $90,000 per year

(Source: Glassdoor.com and Indeed.com)

The job of an SEO demands that you always keep yourself updated with the latest trends in the search industry. You can learn SEO through online courses and obtain hands-on expert training to become an SEO master. If you stop learning, you stop growing. This is the success mantra for SEO.

Chapter #19: Future of SEO

The future of SEO is very bright. Businesses will need an SEO specialist to rank their website in the search results. Every business whether small or big will need qualified SEO professionals to promote their site organically.

Some companies will take the help of freelancer SEO specialists while other big companies will hire an in house SEO team to do the job.

The primary focus of SEO will be on the following things in the future:

• User experience – The better the user experience of a website, the greater will be the chances of achieving higher rankings in the search engines.
• Storytelling – Due to increased competition, brands that are able to sell stories will eventually win the race. SEO is a stream of marketing so naturally, SEOs will be required to be good storytellers. 
• Better Experience in Handling Multiple SEO Tools – There is a need to handle multiple SEO tools. SEOs will have to handle a number of tools to improve their quality of work. 
• Featured Snippets and Voice Search – Instead of getting a rank in the number one position, SEOs will now have to compete for the position zero or the featured snippets. 
• Artificial Intelligence – SEOs will need to predict the success ratio and make use of AI to prepare content and add qualified leads to the pipeline.
• Brand SEO – You can’t really increase the SEO value of a website if it’s not a brand. SEOs will need to focus more on branding because Google follows the brand. If your brand is loved by a lot of people then your site will do good in the search results. 

Hope you learned a lot from this SEO tutorial. I will update this SEO guide regularly to include more lessons. Happy learning!