What is SEO? SEO stands for search engine optimization. It's the practice of optimizing content to be discovered through a search engine's organic search results. Think of a search engine as a filing system in a library. The library has potentially billions of books
with hundreds of trillions of pages. So let's say you want to find information
on health supplements. The search engine will then look through all
pages in its index and try to return the most relevant results. Now, the first search engine you're probably
thinking of is Google. But there are tons of other search engines
you can optimize your content for. For example, YouTube SEO is the process of getting traffic to your videos in YouTube's organic search results. Amazon SEO is the same, but you're optimizing
your product pages to get free organic traffic. And of course, Google SEO, is the process
of optimizing your website to rank on Google and drive more traffic to your web pages. Now, search engines use sophisticated algorithms
and technology to return the best results for any given query. Nobody knows exactly how these algorithms
work, but we have clues, particularly for Google, so we can make some optimizations. Now, why should you incorporate SEO into your
marketing strategy? Well, there are 3 major benefits of search
engine optimization that attracts marketers from all over the world. #1. Traffic from your SEO efforts are free. #2. Your traffic will be consistent once you're
ranking high. And #3. You have the opportunity to reach massive
audiences, you wouldn't have access to otherwise. Now, since every search engine has unique
algorithms, you and I won't be able to cover how each of them works. And for that reason, we're going to be focusing
on how Google works to rank pages since it's the largest search engine and the one that
we here at Ahrefs have the most information on. So how does Google work? Well, there are two main terms you need to
understand. These are crawling and indexing. To actually attain information, Google uses
crawlers, also known as spiders, which gather publicly available information from all over
the web. The spiders start with a list of URLs, which
they may have previously crawled or found in sitemaps. These are called seeds. They then follow the hyperlinks on the pages
from the seeds and then crawl those newly discovered pages. And this process goes on and on, allowing
them to build a massive index of information. They then take all of this data back to Google's servers to be added to what they call, their "search index." Their algorithms then work by taking things
like keywords and content freshness to categorize queries so they can return the most relevant
results to searchers in a fraction of a second. Now, Google isn't just about matching keywords
within a search query. They've created something called the "Knowledge
Graph," which according to Google, "goes beyond keyword matching to better understand the
people, places and things you care about." I'll show you some examples of this in a bit. For now, let's dig into the details of how
their search algorithm works. Again, Google's goal is to sort through hundreds
of trillions of web pages within their search index and find the most relevant results in a fraction
of a second. On Google's "How Search algorithms work" page, they say that they look at the words of a
searcher's query, relevance and usability of pages, expertise of sources, and your location and settings. These ranking factors aren't linear, but they're
weighted depending on the nature of your query. As an example, they mention that "freshness"
of content plays a bigger role in answering queries about current news topics. However for definition-based queries like
"what is search engine optimization?," freshness wouldn't play as large of a factor, since
this core definition itself hasn't really changed. In addition to technology based innovations
like artificial intelligence and machine learning, Google also uses a group of people to manually
assess how well a website gives people who click on the results what they're looking for. These people are called, "Search Quality Raters." Rest assured that these aren't people at Google
manually moving your web page around in the search results because they like or don't like you. These people don't directly impact rankings, but rather helps Google benchmark the quality of their results. For now, let's dig deeper into a few broad
categories of Google's ranking factors. The first and most obvious thing they need
to do is understand the meaning of a query. For example, if you search for "slow cooker recipes," what do you expect to see in Google's search results? Probably a list of recipes, right? And that's how Google interprets the query too. But what if you just search for the word "slow cooker?" What would you expect to see? After keying that into Google search, you'll see
product listings and ecommerce category pages. Google is able to interpret that someone searching
for this phrase likely has the intent to purchase the appliance rather than look for recipes in that time. Understanding the meaning of a query comes
down to language. Google has created language models to decipher
strings of words they should look up. They understand that when you type "slow coker",
that you're actually looking for "slow cooker." They also understand synonyms. For example, looking at the search results
for "how to make a website," you'll see that they've bolded synonyms within
the search results. Beyond language, search algorithms also try
to understand the type of information you're looking for. For example, if you search for "ps4 unboxing," you'll see that the top 10 Google search results are chalk full of pages from YouTube. They understand that anyone searching for
an unboxing tutorial, would likely prefer video content over text or images. Whereas a query like "map of New York," will show you image results as well as a widget from Google Maps. Now, what about a query like, "best mexican restaurant?" You'll see that Google shows restaurants that
are close to your location, despite not entering a city name in the query. And that's because someone searching for this
isn't going to fly halfway across the world for lunch. Another part of interpreting a searcher's
query comes down to freshness. For example, if you search for "Donald Trump," Google understands that people likely want recent news, over biographies. So they give priority in their top stories
widget from reputable sources. They also understand that if you're looking
for something like "best headphones," that you likely want fresh information since new
models and manufacturers are always on the rise. And you can identify this right in Google's
search results seeing as all top ranking pages have the current year in the title. Most, if not all of the things we've covered
here can be summed up into what SEOs often refer to as "search intent," which basically means the reason behind
a searcher's query. This is arguably one of the most important
things to master as an SEO. If you're unable to match the searcher's intent, in terms of content type and format, your chances of ranking are slim. But there are additional layers to understand
how Google works. This leads us nicely into how Google identifies
relevance through content on a web page. In the most basic form, search engines will
look at the content of the page to see if the words on that page are relevant
to your query. But they're sophisticated enough to go beyond
"exact match keywords." Google understands related keywords too. A page increases in relevance with other semantically
similar keywords. For example, if you have an article on how
to get a driver's license, you may have subsections on licensing for cars, motorcycles, and buses. These are all automobiles and should have keyword overlaps that help connect the topic as a whole. For example, "road," "driving," "seatbelt," "safety,"
"exam," and "test," these would all be semantically relevant
keywords that can help search engines better understand what your post is about. Another example would be if you were creating
a post on "the best luxury watches." Now, I want you to think of a 5-letter word that
pops to mind when it comes to luxury watches. Let me help you out a bit. Rolex. And if you look at the content of the top
10 ranking pages, you'll see that they all include that brand, other popular luxury brands, and likely have watch related jargon like "bezel," "bridge," or "chronograph." Rather than returning results that have "best
luxury watches" written 100 times on the page, Google can see which pages are the most relevant
to the searcher's request. And Google confirms this by saying: "These relevance signals help search algorithms
assess whether a webpage contains an answer to your search query, rather than just repeating
the same question." Another factor Google looks at is the
"quality of content." Google tries to prioritize and rank the most
reliable sources. While "quality content," is impossible to
objectively nail 100%, they use 3 broad categories to help identify
quality pages. These are, expertise, authoritativeness, and
trustworthiness on a given topic; Also known as EAT. One signal that Google mentions are getting
websites to link to your content, which SEOs call backlinks. Links build up a page's "authoritativeness," which is outlined in Google's famous patent on PageRank. From a general view, think of backlinks as votes. When people link to your pages, they're essentially
vouching for your content and telling their readers that they should check out
your page for more information. Now, to prevent people from "gaming" the system,
Google uses spam algorithms to try and identify deceptive or manipulative behavior. One example would be "link exchanges," meaning
you contact other webmasters and ask them to link to you. And in return, you'll link to them. We won't dig too deep into these factors,
but if you're interested in learning more, I'll link up Google's search quality rating
guidelines in the description, which has nearly 50,000 words on how they assess "quality content." Another factor Google considers is usability
of webpages. Google wants to show results that keep their
searchers happy. And this goes beyond providing the "right"
content for the query. There are a couple of confirmed ranking factors
that relate to usability. The first is page speed. Google found that as page load time increases,
the probability of bounce, or the chance of someone leaving your website without visiting
another page, goes up dramatically. And it makes sense. If Google were to show slow-loading pages
that result in bounces, then that dissatisfaction would increase amongst
their users. As a result, Google announced in 2018 that
page speed will become a part of their mobile search ranking algorithm. The second usability factor is "mobile friendliness." Today, websites should appear correctly no
matter what device you're on and no matter what browser you're using. This is often referred to as "responsive design." Google has shifted to "mobile first indexing." This means that they'll predominantly use the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking. And as of July 1, 2019, all new websites will
be "mobile first" by default. All of these things and many more factors
can be summarized into user experience. Google wants to return results that are both
relevant and provide a solid user experience. A very cool and somewhat controversial way
that Google works is through personalized data. Google keeps track of your location, past
search history, and search settings to "tailor your results to what is most useful and relevant
for you in that moment." But as many people are becoming aware of privacy
issues on the internet, this may leave you extremely satisfied or perhaps, on edge. Let's look at a few examples of how personalization
affects your Google searches. I'm in Toronto, Canada, so when I type in the
letter "b," Google provides relevant search suggestions to my location like "blue jays," which is our baseball team, and "BMO," which is a major bank in Canada. Now, if I change my IP address to one in Chicago,
then you'll see very different results like "bank of america," and "barnes and noble,"
which is a popular bank and bookstore respectively. Now, let's look at how they tailor search suggestions
based on previous searches. Let's say I want to find "hotels in barcelona." I'll start typing in "hotels," and let's say that I actually changed my mind halfway through the search. Take a second and look through the results. You'll see that they're all tailored to my current location. So let's delete this. Instead, I want to search for things to do in Barcelona,
so I can choose a hotel around that location. Now, I'll search for "What to do in Barcelona." Lots of fun stuff! Now, it's time to find a hotel. So if I start typing in "hotels," you'll see that Google's first autosuggestion
is, "hotels in barcelona," which as you saw before was not the case. These are just a few basic ways Google works. And it's absolutely critical that you understand
this when you're learning SEO. By understanding how search works, you can begin optimizing your pages with some level of direction. So how do you start optimizing your website for search? If you're new to SEO, then I highly recommend
watching our video on doing SEO for beginners, where you'll get a top-level view of how you can
optimize your website for higher Google rankings. Or if you're past that "beginner stage," I
recommend digging through our channel where we have a ton of actionable tutorials to help
grow your search traffic. I'll link up both of those for you in the
description. Now, if you enjoyed this video, then make sure
to like, share, and subscribe for actionable SEO and marketing tutorials. And if you have any questions, leave one in
the comments below. I'll see you in the next tutorial.
