What Is SEO – Search Engine Optimization?

SEO - What is Search Engine Optimization?  SEO stands for "Search Engine Optimization". In simple terms, it is the process of improving your site to increase its visibility when people search for products or services related to your business on Google, Bing, and other search engines. The more your page appears in search results, the more likely it is to attract attention and attract potential and existing customers to your business.   

How does SEO work? 

 Search engines like Google and Bing use bots to crawl pages on the internet, move them from site to site, gather information about those pages, and place them in their index. Think of the index like a giant library where a librarian can pull up a book (or a web page) to help you find exactly what you`re looking for at the time.  

 Next, algorithms analyze pages in the index, taking into account hundreds of ranking factors or signals, to determine the order pages should appear in the search results for a given query. In our library analogy, the librarian has read every single book in the library and can tell you exactly which one will have the answers to your questions. 

  Our SEO success factors can be considered proxies for aspects of the user experience. It`s how search bots estimate exactly how well a website or web page can give the searcher what they`re searching for.  Unlike paid search advertising, you cannot pay search engines to rank higher in organic search. This means that SEO experts have to do the work. That's where we enter. 

 The Periodic Table of SEO Elements categorizes elements into 6 major categories and weights according to their overall importance to SEO. For example, content quality and keyword research are key elements of content optimization, while crawlability and speed are important elements of site architecture. 

 The newly updated  Periodic Table of SEO also contains a list of toxins that undermine SEO best practices. These are shortcuts or tricks that may have been sufficient to guarantee a high ranking back in the day when the engines` methods were much less sophisticated. And, they might even work for a short time now — at least until you`re caught.  

 We`ve also got a brand new Niches section that deep-dives into the SEO success factors behind three key niches: Local SEO, News/Publishing, and Ecommerce SEO. While our overall SEO Periodic Table will help you with the best practices, knowing the nuances of SEO for each of these Niches can help you succeed in search results for your small business, recipe blog, and/or online store. 

  The search algorithms are designed to surface relevant, authoritative pages and provide users with an efficient search experience. Optimizing your site and content with these factors in mind can help your page rank higher in search results.