“SEO” stands for Search Engine Optimization, it is a process of optimizing a website so that people can easily find it via search engine.

So beginners, did you understand what SEO is?

I think no..!

And do you know why I think like that?

Because as a beginner, it was difficult for me to understand that as well.

Well, I came into the field of SEO in the year 2011.

At that time when I started learning SEO, I read n number of blogs to understand the term.

Reading those blogs I found one common thing on each blog and that is they use difficult technical terms and no real-life examples.

Of course for beginners reading such blog is quite confusing.

Even today if you want to learn SEO from the Internet you might get confused after reading some blogs.

Because of the terms they use and to understand every term they give a link to another blog which is quite confusing for beginners.

When I started learning SEO I always wanted everything related to SEO for beginners in one place and in a simple manner with an example. But I couldn’t find any blog which explains in such a manner.

Even today you might have searched and faced the same problem which I faced 6 years back.

So, from my experience, I have tried to create a simple and short way to make beginners understand, what is SEO?

In this blog I am going to explain below points

• What is SEO?
• How does Search Engine work?
• Why is SEO Important?

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a methodology of strategies, techniques and tactics used to increase the amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search engine results page (SERP)

Let me explain it in a simple example

Suppose you are looking to buy men’s shoes for your dad.

And your budget is $100.

But you don’t know which website is offering good shoes under your budget.

To know your answer the first thing pops up in your mind is Lets “Google it”

When you enter a query Men’s Shoes under $100 in a Google search box and hit ‘enter’ you get a list of web results on your screen which contains query related to term men’s shoes under $100.

You usually tend to visit a website that is at the top of this list.

As search engines are smart enough to show you most accurate results for your search queries.

But in a search result, you will find many merchants who are offering same shoes under same range but still they rank deep down in a search results.

When you scroll the search engine result page till the end you will find page index number.

Clicking on those page index number Google will take you to second search result page and their also you will find e-commerce portals who are offering same shoes but they are on the second page of the Google.

Have you ever wondered why and how this happens different merchants offering same shoes under same range but some of them are at the top and some of them are on second or 3rd page of Google search?

This is because of powerful web marketing technique called Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

No doubt every e-commerce portals have done SEO for their website. But right technique and right strategy are important to get rank for your website on Google.

Right, now I will not go into the deep about SEO technique because it will just bounce over your head.

To understand SEO, it is essential to know how a search engine works. How it brings search results on your screen when you insert query.

Understanding, how search engine work mechanism is important because it will automatically give you the answer about what kind of activities are performed in SEO to get a good result is search queries for any web page.

How does Search Engines Work?

The search engine is a set of a programme that searches for a website that is relevant to search query.

This brief explanation is not enough to understand how a search engine works. because search engine performs several activities to deliver search results- crawling, indexing, processing, calculating relevancy and retrieving.

Let’s start with crawling and Indexing process of search engine:

All search engines have their own algorithm to make sense what you are searching for and pull out result on your screen.

This task is performed by the piece of software called crawler or a spider.

These bots Spider or Crawler first find out the robot.txt file from your site main directory.

Because robot.txt file contain a piece of code which indicate bot which site link has to be crawled or which has to be not.

After getting the list now bot will make a notes of your title’s, keywords, description, navigation,(Basically every thing) to learn what your site is about .

After combine findings from each page bot will build an index in a large database.

This process is called indexing

Now move to calculating relevancy and retrieving process:

Under this method, crawler checks more than 200 SEO factors.

And according to that they showcase the results and rank web pages in the search results.

Those web pages which pass the maximum SEO factors get better rank in the search results.

This is how a search engine works whenever you search.

After reading this I think curiosity of learning deeply about the working of search engine must come inside you because before optimizing your website you should be more familiar with search engine.

So I found an infographic through which you can understand about how search engine works

Around 80% of people are using Google search engine around the world to search and rest use other.

So it is important to understand how Google search engine works. Watch the below video provided by Google

Now that you understand what is SEO and how search engine works. Let us jump to why SEO is important for any business around the world.

Why is SEO Important?

Around 60% of people purchase product or service online.

Business on Internet grows 2.3% daily. Then the business who still finding their path to Internet.

You must be thinking why I am talking about all these stats and what it has to do with SEO?

Let me Explain You..!!!

After reading the above stats one thing is clear, business on Internet having a tough competitions between them.

To get a better graph for your business and make better interaction with your customer, visibility of your business on the internet is the primary step for you.

Here visibility on the internet means getting good rank in search results and to get heavy traffic to your website. (It may be Google, Bing, Yahoo etc).

There are two ways through which you can increase traffic and sales for your business. One is running ads by investing money and the second one is SEO.

Let’s suppose you go with 1st method (Investing lots of money in ads). Now there is high chance that you will grow business. But it is for limited time period.

But what if your budget is limited and all your money is already spent on paid advertising.

After you budget is drained it will directly affect your sales graph and you will start losing new customers.

Because they can’t find you!

It is also not possible for business owners to run ads every time because business has many pillars where you have to invest money in more success.

But if you go with 2nd method (SEO Method). No doubt it will take time to get better visibility and get traffic to your business website.

Most important, once you start trending on top of search results using SEO techniques there is better chance for your business to stay there for longer time for “FREE“.

SEO is one of the best ways to connect with targeted customers.

And it also helps you to make a long relationship with your customers with the right audience.

Because it allows you to market to people when they are looking for the products and services your business provides.

Like 1st method. In SEO You don’t have to interrupt their favorite TV show; you don’t have to take up space on a page where they are reading a news article or visiting any website.

You just show up when they are looking for businesses like yours.

And it gives you long-term profit.

Conclusion:

To sum it up, SEO is a way to optimize your website so that search engine can understand it better and give you a higher rank in their search results and gain organic traffic.

Adopting proper SEO technique can boost your business for better ROI.

I hope this small effort of mine can you help you understand more about SEO.

If you have any questions or suggestions then feel free to comment below.