What Is SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of getting targeted traffic to a website from a search engine’s organic rankings. Common tasks associated with SEO include creating high-quality content, optimizing content around specific keywords, and building backlinks.
In other words:
SEO is all about improving a site’s rankings in the organic (non-paid) section of the search results.
SEO is about improving a site's organic ranking
The main benefit of ranking for a specific keyword is that you can get “free” traffic to your site, month after month.
Organic traffic – Last 30 days
Here are the topics that we’ll cover in this complete guide to SEO:
How Search Engines Work
How SEO Works
Organic vs. Paid Results
Why Is SEO Important?
Customers and Keywords
SEO-Friendly Content
High-Quality Content Examples
On-Page SEO Basics
Intro to Technical SEO
Link Building Basics
Search Intent
Emerging SEO Trends
How Search Engines Work
Now it’s time to learn how search engines like Google actually work.
When you search for something in Google (or any other search engine), an algorithm works in real-time to bring you what that search engine considers the “best” result.
Robot Scanning Numerous Websites
Specifically, Google scans its index of “hundreds of billions” of pages in order to find a set of results that will best answer your search.
How does Google determine the “best” result?
Even though Google doesn’t make the inner workings of its algorithm public, based on filed patents and statements from Google, we know that websites and web pages are ranked based on:
Relevancy
If you search for “chocolate chip cookie recipes”, you don’t want to see web pages about truck tires.
That’s why Google looks first-and-foremost for pages that are closely-related to your keyword.
However, Google doesn’t simply rank “the most relevant pages at the top”. That’s because there are thousands (or even millions) of relevant pages for every search term.
For example, the keyword “cookie recipes” brings up 349 million results in Google:
"cookie recipes" – SERPs
So to put the results in an order that bubbles the best to the top, they rely on three other elements of their algorithm:
Authority
Authority is just like it sounds: it’s Google’s way of determining if the content is accurate and trustworthy.
The question is: how does Google know if a page is authoritative?
They look at the number of other pages that link to that page:
Authority judged by number of pages linked
(Links from other pages are known as “backlinks”.)
In general, the more links a page has, the higher it will rank:
More backlinks – Higher ranking
(In fact, Google’s ability to measure authority via links is what separates it from search engines, like Yahoo, that came before it.)
Usefulness
Content can be relevant and authoritative. But if it’s not useful, Google won’t want to position that content at the top of the search results.
In fact, Google has publicly said that there’s a distinction between “higher quality content” and “useful” content.
Distinction between higher-quality content and useful content
For example, let’s say that you search for “Paleo Diet”.
The first result you click on (“Result A”) is written by the world’s foremost expert on Paleo. And because the page has so much quality content on it, lots of people have linked to it.
Unorganised content
However, the content is completely unorganized. And it’s full of jargon that most people don’t understand.
Contrast that with another result (“Result B”).
It’s written by someone relatively new to the Paleo Diet. And their website doesn’t have nearly as many links pointing to it.
However, their content is organized into distinct sections. And it’s written in a way that anyone can understand:
Useful content
Well, that page is going to rank highly on the “usefulness scale”. Even though Result B doesn’t have as much trust or authority as Result A, it will still perform well in Google.
(In fact, it may even rank HIGHER than Result A.)
Google measures usefulness largely based on “User Experience Signals”.
In other words: how users interact with the search results. If Google sees that people really like a particular search result, it will get a significant ranking boost:
Positive user experience boosts ranking
My #1 SEO Tip for Higher Rankings
Create a website that people love! Search engines are designed to measure different signals across the Web so they can find websites that people like most. Play right into their hands by making those signals real and not artificial.
And now it’s time to put this stuff into practice with a step-by-step SEO tutorial.
How SEO Works
SEO works by optimizing your site for the search engine that you want to rank for, whether it’s Google, Bing, Amazon or YouTube.
Specifically, your job is to make sure that a search engine sees your site as the overall best result for a person’s search.
How they determine the “best” result is based on an algorithm that takes into account authority, relevancy to that query, loading speed, and more.
(For example, Google has over 200 ranking factors in their algorithm.)
In most cases, when people think “search engine optimization”, they think “Google SEO”. Which is why we’re going to focus on optimizing your site for Google in this guide.
Organic vs. Paid Results
Search engine result pages are separated into two distinct sections: organic and paid results.
Organic vs. Paid Results
Organic Search Results
Organic search results (sometimes referred to as “natural” results) are natural results that rank based 100% on merit.
In other words, there’s no way to pay Google or other search engines in order to rank higher in the organic search results.
Search engines rank the organic search results based on hundreds of different ranking factors. But in general, organic results are deemed by Google to be the most relative, trustworthy, and authoritative websites or web pages on the subject.
Organic results are higher quality
I have more details on how search engine algorithms work later on. But for now, the important thing to keep in mind is:
When we talk about “SEO”, we’re talking about ranking your website higher up in the organic search results.
Paid Results
Paid search results are ads that appear on top of or underneath the organic results.
Paid results ranked by amount paid
Paid ads are completely independent of organic listings. Advertisers in the paid results section are “ranked” by how much they’re are willing to pay for a single visitor from a particular set of search results (known as “Pay Per Click Advertising”).
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) types compared
Type of SEM Ranking Speed Skill Level Required Cost Typical ROI Potential ROI Conversion Rate
SEO 2/5 5/5 3/5 4/5 5/5 2/5
PPC 5/5 3/5 5/5 2/5 4/5 4/5
Why Is SEO Important?
In short: search is a BIG source of traffic.
In fact, here’s a breakdown of where most website traffic originates:
Traffic data referrer
As you can see, over 60% of all traffic on the web comes from search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and YouTube. All in all, search accounts for 10x more traffic than social media.
Let’s illustrate the importance of SEO with an example…
Let’s say that you run a party supply company. According to the Google Keyword Planner, 110,000 people search for “party supplies” every single month.
Number of searches
Considering that the first result in Google gets around 20% of all clicks, that’s 22,000 visitors to your website each month if you show up at the top.
Number of clicks
But let’s quantify that – how much are those visitors worth?
The average advertiser for that search phrase spends about 1 dollar per click. Which means that the web traffic of 22,000 visitors is worth roughly $22,000 a month.
How much each click is worth
And that’s just for that search phrase. If your site is SEO-friendly, then you can rank for hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of different keywords.
In other industries, like real estate or insurance, the value of search engine traffic is significantly higher.
For example, advertisers are paying over $45 per click on the search phrase “auto insurance price quotes.”
Search engine traffic value across industries
Customers and Keywords
Before you start to dive into the nitty gritty of title tags and HTML, it’s important not to skip an important step:
Customer and keyword research.
Here’s where you figure out what your customers search for… and the exact words and phrases they use to search. That way, you can rank your site for things that your customers search for every day.
Sound good? Here’s exactly how to do it.
Customer Research
If you already run an online business you probably have a good idea of what your target customer looks like.
(Also known as a “Customer Persona”.)
Here’s an example:
Basketball persona
This type of customer research isn’t just to help you create products that people want. It’s also a super important part of SEO and content marketing.
I’ll explain…
To succeed with SEO, you need to create content around topics that your customers search for.
And unless you know who your customer is, it’s almost impossible to understand the types of things that they search for (more on that later).
The best way to dig deep into your target customer? HubSpot’s Make My Persona tool.
Make My Persona tool
This nifty-free tool helps you create a customer persona, step-by-step. At the end of the process, you’ll have a detailed avatar that you can refer to again and again.
Persona overview
Nice!
Finding Keywords
Now that you have a customer personal, it’s time for the next step: keyword research.
Here’s where you drill down into the exact words and phrases (search queries) that customers type into the search box.
In general, keywords tend to fall into two main buckets: keywords people use to find what you sell (Product Keywords).
You also have keywords your target audience uses when they’re not specifically looking for what you sell (Informational Keywords).
Product vs. Informational keywords
How about an example?
Let’s say that you run an eCommerce website that sells tennis shoes.
Your bucket of product keywords would be things like:
Tennis shoes free shipping
Nike tennis shoes
Tennis shoes for flat feet
On the other hand, Informational Keywords are things that your audience is interested in when they’re not necessarily searching for shoes:
Second serve tutorial
How to stop unforced errors
Proper backhand form
How to hit a topspin serve
And to succeed with SEO, you want to optimize pages on your website around both types of keywords.
That way, when your customer searches for your product, you show up in the search engine results.
And for keywords that your customers use when they’re NOT looking for your product or service, you show up for those too.
Keyword Research Tips
Here are a few tips to help you find keywords.
First, use Google Autocomplete.
You’ve probably noticed this feature already.
Whenever you start typing something into Google, you get a bunch of search suggestions:
Google search – Link building – Suggestions
I recommend typing keyword ideas into Google and jotting down any suggestions that come up.
Second, type words and phrases into Answer The Public.
Answer The Public Homepage
This free tool is GREAT for finding informational keywords.
For example, if you run a blog about the Paleo Diet, you’d type “paleo diet” into ATP:
Answer The Public – Paleo questions
And it will pump out questions that people ask around that topic.
For example, one question I found was “will paleo diet increase cholesterol?”.
Answer The Public – Paleo diet – Cholesterol
That question is an awesome topic for a blog post or video.
Next, use a keyword research tool.
Keyword tools can help you figure out how many people search for each keyword and how difficult it will be to rank on the first page of Google for that term.
In other words, they can help you choose the best keywords from your list. There are a million and one keyword research tools out there.
Here are a few I recommend checking out:
SEMRush
KeywordTool.io
Keywords Everywhere Extension
Moz Keyword Explorer
Seed Keywords
But the best all-around free keyword tool is Google’s Keyword Planner.
Google Keyword Planner
Even though Keyword Planner was designed to help people with Google Ads campaigns, it can still help you find keywords for SEO.
All you need to do is enter a product keyword or informational keyword into it.
Google keyword planner – Search
You’ll then get data on that exact phrase (like average monthly searches)… and a list of related keywords.
Google keyword planner – Results
You can use the average monthly searches you get in the GKP to figure out which keywords get tons of searches… and which keywords don’t get searched for very much.
Finally, if you’re new to SEO, you want to focus on long-tail keywords.
Why?
Because long-tail phrases are less competitive.
Number of keywords: Competition vs. Conversion
Once you get the hang of SEO, you can start targeting more competitive keywords. But when you’re just starting out, stick to long-tail terms.
For example, when I started my blog, almost 100% of the content I put out was designed to rank for long-tail, informational keywords, like “How to get high-quality backlinks”:
Backlinko – High quality backlinks
As my site’s authority increased I went after shorter phrases that were more competitive, like “backlinks”:
Backlinko – Hub Backlinks
If you want to see the exact process that I use to find keywords, I recommend setting aside a few minutes to watch this short video:
SEO-Friendly Content
It’s no secret that SEO and content are closely linked.
In general, the better content you put out there, the higher you’ll rank. It’s (obviously) not that simple. But it’s a good rule of thumb to follow as you write content for SEO.
With that, here are more details on how to create SEO-friendly content.
Creating Content for Product and Service Pages
Content for product and service pages should still be high-quality. But that doesn’t mean that you want your product pages to read like blog posts.
In fact, the main goal of your product pages should be to convert browsers into leads and customers. That’s why you want your product pages to focus on the features and benefits that your product offers.
For example, look at the Baremetics homepage.
Baremetrics – Homepage
In many ways, even though this isn’t a blog post or article, it’s still high-quality content. As you can see, the well-designed page and outlines key product features.
Baremetrics – Homepage copy
So someone searching for a Product Keyword like “revenue forecasting software” would get a lot of value from this page… even though the main goal of the page is to get you to sign up for a trial.
Bottom line? Make your product page content as helpful as possible. But don’t forget that conversions should be your #1 goal.
Creating High-Quality Blog Content
When most people say things like “content is king”, they’re talking about the type of insanely useful content that gets published on blogs.
(In other words: not content that you’d find on most product and services pages.)
And there’s no doubt that producing awesome content can help improve your Google rankings.
In fact, HubSpot found that businesses that publish content on a regular basis get 350% more traffic than those that don’t put as much effort into their content marketing.
HubSpot traffic
I’m living proof that this approach works.
Thanks to a commitment to publishing high-quality content, my site gets 553,682 search engines visitors every month:
Backlinko monthly users – April 2021
And I wouldn’t get NEARLY as much traffic if I just slapped up a bunch of product pages and hoped that Google ranked them. That’s not how SEO works in 2021.
To succeed with search engine optimization today, your site needs to put out AMAZING stuff on a consistent basis. Anything less simply won’t cut it.
In fact, the latest stats from WordPress reveal that 70 million blog posts come out every month:
WordPress – Number of posts published every month
And that’s just WordPress. People also publish millions of posts on Medium, Shopify and other platforms.
Bottom line? For your content to stand out (and rank) in 2021, it needs to be exceptional. Otherwise, it’s going to get buried by the millions of posts that come out every single day.
High-Quality Content Examples
Now I’d like to share a few examples of the type of high-quality content that’s working really well in 2021.
Complete Lists
Complete Lists are where you compile a comprehensive list of tips, items, techniques, recipes… or just about anything you can think of.
These are valuable because you’re curating items from lots of different sources. So instead of having to read one post with 20 tips and another post with 15 tips, your content gives people everything they need on a single page.
For example, I published this list of 170+ link building strategies on my blog a while back:
Backlinko – Link building strategies post
Thanks to my Complete List, you now have one-stop shopping for all things link building.
And because my content provides so much value, 935 different websites have linked to it.
Link Building Strategies – Referring Domains
This post also brings in over 4,500 targeted visitors to my website every month.
Link Building Strategies – Traffic
Pretty cool.
Step-By-Step Guides
Detailed step-by-step guides are as old as the internet itself. And they can still work GREAT.
For example this SEO strategy guide on my blog has done really well.
Backlinko – SEO strategy
I made sure to go into super-duper in-depth on every step.
Backlinko – SEO Strategy Guide Steps
That way, my content stood out from most other SEO strategy posts that left out key details.
So yeah, you want each step to be SUPER detailed. That way, your content will stand out from the other step-by-step guides already out there.
This single page generates 2,771 organic search visitors every month:
SEO Strategy – Traffic
Content With Data
BuzzSumo reviewed 100 million posts as part of their “Content Trends Report”.
BuzzSumo – Content trends report
They found that it’s harder than ever to get people to share and link to the content. Why? The amount of content that’s come out since 2015 has exploded, making it harder to stand out.
On a more positive note, they discovered that “authoritative research and reference content continues to gain links.”.
In other words: content with data is still working really well.
I’ve noticed this with the content on my blog.
For example, in 2016 I published these two blog posts:
Side-by-side
One was a case study:
Content Relaunch home
The other was a piece of original research packed with data:
Search Engine Ranking – Home
Which do you think did better?
To date, my case study has 603 links:
Ahrefs – Content relaunch – Backlinks
But my data-driven guide has 22.5K links:
Ahrefs – Search engine ranking – Backlinks
That’s the good news. The bad news is that creating this type of data-driven content can be really tricky.
But if you’re up to the challenge, this article will show you how to get started with original research content.
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