Search engine optimization increases the chance that your written web content will be seen high up on the first search engine results page (the SERP) on Google and Duckduckgo. It has to be well-written for both humans and search engines to read. This increases “organic” traffic that you don’t have to pay for through marketing or advertising.
People tend to view Google as a tech company. In reality, they are primarily an advertising and marketing company. This is why they will not tell you exactly how their search engine works or how to always come up at the top of the SERP.
Still, we know that Google builds its index and databases by using sitemaps and following links from “trusted” websites. These links can be on a page it knows from the same website or another website. We also know that they use keywords and phrases, search terms that users enter to find relevant web pages. If you know what those keywords are and use them in your content correctly, then your content is more likely to rank higher on Google’s SERP.
One way to find good keywords is to use a free tool like this keyword generator. You have to research keywords and then use them as naturally as possible in your writing. Try not to overuse keywords. Remember, you have to write for humans as well as machines.
Search engines like Google crawl the web, index websites in their databases, and use complex algorithms to rank them. When you use Google to make a web search, you aren’t really searching the web; you are searching Google’s index. If your website is not indexed by Google, it simply can’t come up on Google’s SERP. This gives Google the power to choose what websites are seen and what pages are never seen at all.
Technical SEO is used to ensure that Google can find, crawl, and index your webpage. To do that, they need permission, and you need a well-crafted robots.txt file so they can crawl with the software. You also need the right meta tag for indexing.
E-E-A-T is Google’s initialism for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust. It is sometimes pronounced like “double eat”. Basically, they want to see if the content is actually helpful. Created by an expert on the topic, it is on an authoritative, trustworthy, and regularly updated website.
Google likes to change the rules and guidelines for best SEO practices and conceal information on exactly how its search engine works. That means SEO results are never guaranteed, and you need to keep up with the most current information available. Free courses can help, and they even offer certifications that can help show your expertise.
You should learn to be like Mr. T by forming a T-shaped SEO expertise. Try to gain a broad understanding of SEO and then go deeper into a particular area, like SEO writing. Books are great resources for that deeper understanding. Try reading some of the SEO books on a subject you are interested in to learn more about.