The Definition of SEO:

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is an exercise of modifying/optimizing your website in order to appear at the top of Search Engine results like Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, etc.

Why SEO:

Whenever a particular user wants to find something online, the first place he visits would be Google.com(or any other relevant search engine). Search Engines now contribute a major portion of Organic Traffic for most of the websites out there.

People search for a specific keyword and then click on a relevant website from the Search Engine results from the top 3 pages(assuming people hardly go beyond the 3^rd page of Google). This makes it vital for a website to not only stay relevant but also to stay on the top. And this is where the application of Search Engine Optimization falls in. Basically, SEO is a practice of increasing the quality and quantity of Organic Traffic to your website by maintaining its relevancy and ranking with the Search Engines

Working of Search Engine Optimization:

Search Engine Optimization is like feeding a baby according to his taste cause unlike adults, babies just won’t feed on what they don’t like.  Understanding how Search Engine works and Optimizing our website according to its taste is the key.  This is what Search Engine Optimization is all about.

Working of Search Engine:

To keep it short, The Search Engine algorithm functions quite systematically. Understand this, It never costs you a single penny to perform a search with Google(or any other search engine). Search Engines make money from Ads. Advertising Revenue is the major part of the revenue for these Search Engines. So, technically Search Engine understands that the more Audience they have, the higher revenue they can make. And the only way to growing and retaining their Audience is by serving them with accurate and relevant results, by providing them with what they are exactly looking for.

This is why Search Engine adapts sophisticated algorithms to cut out duplicate webpages, spammy sites, and irrelevant content. Search Engines highly prioritize quality and relevancy over any other. Here are a few factors which Search Engine looks for before displaying the website in the results:

1.Quality

2. Relevance

3. Uniqueness

4. Quantity

5. User Experience

6. Site Loading speed

7. Mobile responsiveness and many other things.

The Search Algorithm working process can be described using three key metrics:

1. Crawling
2. Indexing
3. Ranking

Understanding the process involved with every metric is quite crucial in order to help search engines understand our website easily so that we can rank on the top of the Search Engine results page(SERP).

For more details on how Search Engine works, visit: Working of Search Engine

Types of SEO:

Basically, three types of SEO practices must be included in your task list to perform all-round SEO for your website.

1. On-site SEO:

                               On-site SEO is all about optimizing the content on your website according to the Search Engines taste. On-site optimization techniques would usually include Heading Tags, Body Tags, Image tags, Unique, relevant & plagiarism free content, and other on-page stuff.

2. Off-site SEO:

                               Off-site SEO generally deals with establishing the brand signals of our website throughout the World Wide Web. It helps strengthen our reputation and relationship with other websites.  Link Building and Guest Blogging are the most commonly practiced Off-page optimization strategies.

3. Technical SEO:

                                 Technical SEO includes the backend portion of your website which cannot be controlled by content. It helps in maintaining a solid website architecture and gives it a proper structure. This further helps search engines top easily crawl & index those websites. Major issues related to Security, Indexing, crawling, loading speed, structure all fall under the Technical SEO category.

Up to Date with Search:

The biggest nightmare for any SEO person is Algorithm updates. These updates haunt the rankings of websites, everything can be turned upside down in a single night whenever a new update rolls out.

Based on the practices of SEO, it is further divided into:

1. White Hat SEO
2. Grey Hat SEO
3. Black Hat SEO

White Hat SEO includes all the ethical strategies and techniques most people work on whereas Black hat SEO includes the unethical strategies people implement to rank fast on top of the Search Engine results. Black Hat practices are usually not recommended and can receive severe penalties from search engines when found. To tackle these kinds of practices and also to improve the search experience for users, Search engines(like Google) often roll out new updates.

While these updates usually screw up rankings of lots of websites but on the other hand, they are also proven to help other websites who precisely focus on High-Quality content and other White Hat SEO strategies. The only way out here is to stay alert and keep constant checks on your website performance at the search results. Always look out for Algorithm updates and make adjustments accordingly. Subscribe and Follow Google updates and other Authorities(like Neil Patel) in the SEO field to get the latest trends, news, and reports regarding SEO.