What is SEO for a website?

What is SEO for a website? It’s one of the most common questions I get from small business owners, entrepreneurs, and bloggers. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s the process website owners, and bloggers take to help the search engines understand their content. When it’s easier for the search engines to understand your content, they're more likely to show you to people searching for similar information. 

Rather than thinking of SEO as something super techy because it's not, think of it as an important connection point between the content you create and the audience it's for. When you do SEO on your content, you make it easier for Google to understand. When Google (or other search engines like Pinterest, podcast apps, or YouTube) understand your content better, it gets shown to more people looking for information like what you have. 

Search Engine Optimization is how you get found and get free traffic from the search engines you use in your business. Google isn't the only search engine you may have available to you. It's the largest, and it's the one that matters the most for your website and blog, but if you have a podcast, your podcast apps are also search engines. Pinterest is a visual search engine and even some social media apps are becoming more search engine friendly. Google and Pinterest are traditional search engines that are designed to connect people with your content on your podcast, website, or blog. Whereas YouTube and other social channels are geared towards keeping users on their websites or in their apps. 

How does SEO work for a website? 

When a searcher goes to a search engine, they generally type a keyword or a phrase to help them find the information they're looking for. The search engines then review the available information that uses that same keyword or a similar one and determine which sites to show the searcher. 

If you haven't done SEO on your website, blog, or podcast, you're less likely to be shown to searchers even if you have the best information because you haven't helped the search engine understand your content. 

If you want to show up high in the results, you need to do SEO on your content. It's that simple. It's the connection point between the content you're creating and the audience it's created for. Without SEO, you're missing out on potential website visitors and podcast listeners. The content you create deserves to be found. SEO is the key to discoverability. 

Why do you need to do SEO?

Every website or blog needs a good SEO strategy so it ranks higher and can grow and gain readers and customers. SEO can be incredibly powerful when done right. It’s not something to “just figure out.” There are so many parts to a full SEO program, and because of the Google Algorithm, there are a lot of rules to follow, too.

If you take the time and effort to build a website and create content, then you need to do SEO as well. A website without SEO might as well not exist because, to Google, it's hidden. If you want people to find your content, you need to do a few simple things for SEO, like choose the right keywords and use them where Google will look to see what your blog post or website page is about. 

Take my free SEO 101 class to learn more about how Google works and what to do for SEO today.

What are the SEO Rules?

Google and other search engines want to provide the best possible results for their users, so they try to rank the most reputable websites at the top of the search results. The rules are pretty simple: create high-quality content that answers users’ questions, build a trustworthy site, and keep doing it over and over again to gain and maintain your rankings.

You want to follow Google's SEO best practices when optimizing your content. Get my free Beginner's Guide to SEO and learn what they are and how to do SEO on your website or blog today.

Do You Have to do SEO?

Yes and no.

Yes, you must do SEO if you want free, organic traffic to your website and to be found on Google. If you don't care about being found on Google or getting free traffic to your website, then no, you don't have to do SEO. 

It's up to you. If you have enough budget to pay for all the traffic you want to grow your business, you can rely solely on ad traffic. But if you'd like to supplement with free traffic, then you need to do search engine optimization so you can earn that organic (free) traffic from Google. 

How do you do SEO on your website? 

SEO has two parts: on-page and off-page. Your website’s on-page SEO includes your page’s meta information such as Title Tag, Meta Description, Header Tags, and Keywords. It also includes your image file names, image ALT text, and content. Internal links (the links from one page or post within your website to another page or post within your same site) impact your SEO. These are all things that Google checks on your website to understand what the content is about so it knows who to show it to in the future. 

Your off-page SEO is comprised of the links back to your website from somewhere else. You want to build these carefully. They help establish the authority of your website, but there are risks associated with link building because so many people cheated over the years. It's most important today to earn links. Don't ever buy them. 

There’s also a technical element to SEO. The search engines crawl your website with a tool they refer to as their “spiders.” The spiders crawl your site by following the links within your navigation and your body copy. We focus on our internal and external links as part of our SEO strategy. If you have a website that’s slow or has broken links or other technical issues, it won’t rank as well. A strong technical foundation is required for SEO, but thankfully, today, it's much easier to have a strong technical foundation without having to do any tech work yourself. 

Today's tech SEO is mainly about how fast your pages load and how your website looks on different screen types. Thankfully, it's pretty basic. 

How do you Improve Your SEO?

Learning how Google works is the first key to improving the SEO for your website or blog. Once you understand the basics of SEO, you can improve your site’s optimization. If you're creating content, be sure to choose keywords that your website has a good chance of ranking for so you can show up higher in the search results. 

SEO is an ongoing process

One of the biggest misconceptions about SEO is that it’s a one-time effort. It’s not. You have to continually optimize your website or blog to maintain your rankings. If you move up to position #1 and stop working on your SEO and your competition is still working on their SEO, they’ll surpass you in a matter of time. You have to continually add new content and make sure your site is able to be crawled by the search engines so you can stay on top of the results. 

If you're ready to get started with SEO today, join me in Simple SEO Content, and I'll show you how to do it step-by-step. It's much easier than you think. 

Updated July 2024, Rachel