Need A Simple Explanation of SEO?

How Search Works

Google™ exists and makes money by being most people's go-to website when they are looking for information and solutions to problems. Whatever your challenge or question, Google will signpost you to the information you're looking for.

Although Google is continually trying to provide answers on Google itself, i.e. you get the information you're looking for without leaving Google, it usually lists web pages that give you what you need.

This list of web pages or Search Engine Results Pages, often referred to as a SERP, is why SEO exists.

In essence, as Google grew in popularity, business owners realised if their web page appeared in a SERP, people would visit their website and potentially buy something. SEO was born, and hopefully the pieces of the jigsaw are starting to come together in your understanding, so let's press on and better understand how Google ranks pages.

How Does Google™ Rank Pages?

Google™ promotes trustworthy authoritative pages to the top of its rankings and measures authority by analysing, amongst other things, popularity. Here's how Google itself explains how that works.

This means creating fantastic content improves your search rankings, but how? Well in two ways.

1. Great content will, by default, use the words and phrases people use in searches. This increases the likelihood of your pages being listed in a SERP.
2. Other websites will potentially link to your content just like we're linking to other people's content on this page. Google uses those links as trust signals and this in turn, improves your rankings.

Over time Google™ picks up on these trust or popularity signals and rewards popular pages with better rankings. The more popular your content becomes, the more authority your website receives and the better your rankings become. Search rankings compound like money in a savings account.

What Is Content?

Regarding SEO, your content should help people solve their business challenges and use the same language they use. Types of content include blogs, videos, case studies and opinion pieces.

Your content should be focused on customers' needs, answering their questions in a way that instils trust. For example, we created this page because we know people are confused about SEO and search in Google for answers. But how did we know this, or did we just guess?

Well, we certainly didn't guess; we used several research tools to help us understand what people search for when they want to know more about search engines. This is often called keyword research because it involves looking for the important or KEY words people type into Google when looking for answers.

Optimising a website involves using relevant keywords - the words and phrases your ideal customers are typing into Google - so your content is aligned with their needs. Armed with that information, a successful SEO strategy will establish how much content is required to stand a chance of ranking. Yes, size matters, so read on to find out why.

Content Type & Length

When optimising a website, people commonly think their content must simply contain keywords to rank on a Google search results page. This is wrong.

To stand any chance of ranking for a keyword, you must develop a thorough understanding of the length and types of content currently ranking, along with an understanding of the authority of the other sites. So there it is again, that word authority. Let's explore it.

What Are Links & Authority?

Links to pages on your website from pages on other websites are important, but don't confuse quality with quantity and don't think about links in isolation from your content. It's vital to understand that having great content massively increases your chances of securing natural links from other trustworthy websites. These links will help you the most.

In simple language, if you have something worth referencing you might secure links worth having. Great sites don't link to poor-quality content, why would they?

That said, getting links, especially links that help to improve your website's organic search rankings, are hard to secure and because of this a whole industry has developed to address the problem. Before we explore the world of links here's Google's stance.

Google's Take On Links

Google uses links to rank websites and in an ideal world, they would like all links to be earned. By that we mean they would prefer it if all links were created passively by other website owners linking to pages based on their merit. For example, a web page about say, tax codes, might link to a government website that adds some value to readers. That link would be effectively endorsing the government web page.

The obvious problem with a link-based search algorithm is it's open to abuse, and here's how.

It's possible, rather than trying to earn links, to simply buy them. Done well, this approach can be very effective and can propel a web page up the search rankings very quickly. In theory, doing this can be risky because in the past search engines were known to penalise website owners who were clearly trying to manipulate search engine rankings. But is this still the case today?

The answer is, possibly, but probably not because we've seen plenty of sites rank well on the back of links that have clearly been bought rather than earned. In effect buying links has become mainstream and here's why.