SEO Basics: What Is SEO and How Does It Work?

Imagine you’re planning a summer getaway and are on the hunt for the best beachfront hotel in Bali. You pull up Google and key in “beachfront hotels in Bali”, which triggers millions of results. With such a wide range of options, how do you decide which hotel to visit?

Chances are, you’ll scroll through the first few results and click on the ones with the most attention-grabbing headlines, engaging descriptions, and the highest ratings. Because you already have a good number of choices, it’s highly likely that you won’t even get to page 2 of Google. This is where search engine optimisation, better known as SEO, comes into play.

You’re probably thinking, “Okay, cool example. But still, what is SEO, and how does it work?” Keep reading as we introduce you to the basics of SEO.

Search engine optimisation, defined

SEO is a set of practices designed to help websites show up on the search engine results pages (SERPs) when users search for their products, services, or information relevant to their area of expertise.

In simpler terms, SEO is like dressing up your website to help it stand out in a crowd. That way, the people looking for you – even those who aren’t looking for you, exactly – can find you effortlessly.

The goal of SEO

It isn’t enough to appear just anywhere on the SERPs; the goal is to rank as high as possible. In a study done in 2020, it was revealed that most users only click on the results on the first page of Google, with 28.5% of clicks going to the first result. Moreover, another study conducted in 2023 found that only 0.44% of searchers click on the second page of Google results.

Sure, you may be able to do that with paid ads – but here’s the thing about organic traffic: it isn’t time bound, and best of all, it’s free. To top it off, when your website is ranking for highly searched keywords that are relevant to your brand, you get to enjoy more traffic, more leads, and more revenue. All that – and without having to lift a finger.

Paid ads vs. SEO

Do a quick Google search, and you’ll notice the results page displays a mix of paid ads (tagged as “sponsored”) and organic results. The brands that sponsor these ads, found at the top of the SERPs, pay a certain amount each time someone clicks on their ad. This is often referred to as paid search or PPC (pay-per-click) advertising.

Both paid ads and SEO have their pros and cons. While SEO will get you a consistent flow of organic traffic and save you money in the long term, it requires time to take effect. On the other hand, paid ads are highly targeted and will get you fast results. They’re an excellent option for limited-time campaigns and performing A/B testing to determine what your target audience is most interested in.

Also read: Google Discovery Ads: What are they? Where should they be used?

How does SEO work?

Now that you know what you can get out of SEO (and for free!), you probably want to figure out how it works so you can get started ASAP.

While Google doesn’t reveal its exact algorithm, the search engine prioritises websites that:

• provide users with unique, relevant, and high-quality information – their content is original, accurate, and up-to-date
• offer a good user experience – for example, websites that load quickly and are easy for users to navigate
• can be considered trustworthy and authoritative – meaning they give relevant answers to a number of highly searched queries, and other websites link to them.

On the other hand, Google’s algorithm penalises specific actions that it considers “bad” website behaviour. As a penalty, websites may either experience a drop in rankings, decrease in website traffic, or total disappearance from the SERPs. Based on Google’s Spam Policies, websites may be penalised for the following:

• Keyword stuffing
• Thin content (content with little to no value)
• Suspicious links to and from your website
• Spammy content
• Malware.

Your next question might be this: how exactly does Google determine how to rank a website? To give you a better idea, here’s a simplified three-step explanation of how search engines work:

1. Crawling

Search engines use robots called “crawlers” to discover new websites and web pages. These crawlers follow links from other websites and sitemaps (XML files that list all of the website’s pages).

2. Indexing

Once a website is crawled, the search engine indexes its content. “Indexing” refers to how the search engine stores information about the website’s content, such as the keywords being used, the titles of the pages, and the links to other websites.

3. Ranking

When a user sends through a query on a search engine, the search engine’s algorithm ranks the websites in the index based on factors such as relevance, authority, trust, and user experience.

Types of SEO

So, let’s get down to business. How does one get started with SEO?

There are many techniques websites can use to improve their search engine rankings, and these can be divided into three categories: on-page, off-page, and technical.

On-page SEO

Considered the foundation of a website’s overall SEO, on-page SEO refers to the practices we can directly apply to a webpage. SEO copywriting plays an essential role in this particular type of SEO, as it involves optimising a page’s content for both people and search engines.

On-page optimisation involves:

• Finding relevant keywords that match your product or service and a user’s search intent
• Using these keywords to write a page’s metadata (titles and descriptions that appear on the SERPs) and copy
• Writing unique, accurate, and updated content
• Making sure that readers can read your copy with ease by taking into account word choice, sentence and paragraph length, and the use of headings
• Maximising internal linking opportunities – linking to other pages of your website where appropriate
• Writing alt image text – descriptions that appear in place of images that fail to load, aid visually impaired readers, and help search engines crawl your website.

Off-page SEO

In a nutshell, the goal of this type of SEO is to build a good reputation for your website by getting other websites to mention your brand and link out to your pages.

Earlier, we discussed how Google rewards websites based on authority and trustworthiness – a lot of which is built through off-page SEO. When other websites point to your brand, it signals to Google that your website provides users with relevant and high-quality content.

Off-page optimisation involves, but is not limited to:

• Link building – getting other websites to link out to your website
• Guest posting on other websites
• Content marketing
• Creating a social media presence for your brand
• Leveraging local SEO through tools like Google Business Profile
• Acquiring reviews and replying to them.

Technical SEO

Finally, technical SEO refers to the “back-end” methods that make it easier for search engines to crawl and understand your website. At the same time, these practices should improve your website’s user experience.

Technical SEO tactics include but are not limited to the following:

• Creating a well-organised structure for your website (in other words, it should be easy for search engines – and users – to navigate your website)
• Improving your website’s loading speed
• Making sure your website is mobile-friendly
• Scanning for duplicate content issues and remedying these, if any
• Determining whether your website has broken pages and redirecting them to live pages
• Ensuring your website is secure by using HTTPS
• Using hreflang tags for international websites (basically, this helps you make sure your webpages are targeting the correct countries and languages)
• Submitting your sitemap to Google
• Implementing structured data or schema markup on your website.

While building your website with all these practices in mind is a great place to start, SEO isn’t just a one-off. It’s important to monitor your website’s SEO health regularly to ensure that you’re consistently providing website visitors – and search engines – with the best experience.

Hopefully, you can now answer the question, “What is SEO?” Equipped with the basics of search optimisation, you’re on your way to building your website’s rankings.

Need help improving your website’s SEO? We’d love to work with you! Click here to get in touch with us.

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