This article not only explains some of the basics of SEO, but also gives direction and strategies to those who are new to the SEO industry. In addition, if you already have a certain SEO foundation, the material contained in this article can also help you to check the gaps.
I have been in the SEO industry for 14 years, and have helped hundreds of companies to achieve accurate customer acquisition through SEO. Today I will share my SEO knowledge with you from some new perspectives, and of course, I will also introduce the new trends of SEO industry.
What is SEO?
Definition of SEO
SEO is the abbreviation of Search Engine Optimization, which refers to the internal and external optimization of a website based on the understanding of the natural ranking mechanism of search engines, in order to improve the natural ranking of keywords in search engines, so as to obtain more traffic and ultimately achieve the purpose of brand promotion or product sales.
Simply put, it is the process of improving your website's keyword search ranking through technical methods, and ultimately getting more website traffic from natural search results.
Benefits of SEO
The following benefits can be obtained after gaining traffic by improving rankings through SEO.
- Increase AD clicks
- Increase product/service sales
- Build brand awareness
The SEO services provided by many companies nowadays are not the same as before. In the past, it might just be a matter of increasing search traffic for a website, but now, in addition to this step, it is more important to be responsible for the conversion effect of the search traffic.
The implementation of SEO solutions is definitely inseparable from search engines, so let's first review the history of search engines.
History of search engines
Search engines have been born for more than 20 years, the development of search engine technology has gone through four major stages.
The first phase, the creation of a classified directory. (1997 - 2001)
At this stage, search engine companies manually collect and organize data to filter and categorize high-quality websites before making them available to users. In this way, the complexity of filtering websites by users is reduced.
In the second phase, text indexing techniques were created. (2001 - 2004)
This is an era of using crawler programs, using techniques that are text indexing and sorting methods. Classical information retrieval models, such as Boolean, vector space or probabilistic models, are used to calculate the relevance of query terms to the textual content of a web page.
The third phase is the era of link analysis. (2004 - 2009)
The focus at this stage is on backlinks. The familiar rules of SEO at this stage are: backlinks are the main focus, content is secondary, and PageRank is studied. The core work of SEO is publishing content and getting backlinks.
The fourth stage, user-centered. (2009 - present)
It has also become the "user experience era". Search engines started to analyze user behavior (click rate, bounce rate, length of stay, etc.), and the better the data, the easier it is to get extra points. At this stage, the focus of SEO work is to meet the needs of users from their perspective.
Understanding the difference between the work of search engines in different periods helps us to be more aware of the focus of SEO work at the moment. It's all about improving SEO results from the user's perspective.
SEO technology classification
SEO techniques are divided into two main categories: black hat SEO and white hat SEO, while those in between are often referred to as gray hat SEO. Details of the two techniques are as follows.
White hat SEO
White Hat SEO is to follow the rules of search engines and use regular techniques to improve SEO ranking. It conforms to search engine optimization guidelines and improves user experience by producing high quality content.
Features: optimization time is long, onsite and offsite optimization requires effort to output content, time-consuming and labor-intensive, and it takes continuous execution to see results.
Black hat SEO
Black Hat SEO in a nutshell is the use of cheating methods banned by search engines to improve SEO results, a way to exploit the vulnerabilities of search engines.
Features: fast results, but there is a certain risk - cheating ranking once detected, will face the consequences of search engine penalties.
In general, from a long-term perspective, it is recommended to choose white hat SEO. Throw a long line not only to catch a big fish, but also conducive to the brand and reputation of the enterprise.
Myths about SEO
I'll talk about the two misconceptions of SEO from the questions some friends often ask me.
Is SEO free?
In fact, SEO is not free, even if you do it entirely on your own without purchasing a paid service, there are still costs involved, such as human costs, time costs, opportunity costs, risk costs, etc.. So there is no free lunch. When discussing the advantages of SEO, many people say that "SEO is free", mainly referring to the traffic brought by the website ranking on the first page is free, which is actually a long-term gain.
After SEO ranking on the first page, will the traffic definitely be converted?
The direct result of ranking on the first page is only increased exposure, which does not necessarily mean that it will bring a lot of traffic to the website. Because it also needs to compete with SEM(Search Engine Marketing) ads.
In addition, website guidance, customer service, and product/service quality can all affect conversion rates.
New SEO trends in 2023
Google SEO combined with self-publishing platform SEO
As long as there is search behavior involved in ranking optimization, then there is an opportunity for SEO. It can also be implemented in some self-publishing platforms.
For example, instagram SEO, YouTube SEO, Meta SEO, etc. Google search tips reveal that many people have now started to adopt this approach.
Join Google's services
Using Google products or services naturally comes with SEO benefits. This is not gibberish. Let's take Google Cloud Services for example, the official instructions are clear and unambiguous.
