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Effective Search Engine Optimization is the secret behind ranking a website on the first page of Google for specific search queries or keywords. As every business has a website today, improving its ranking to bring potential customers and beat competitors is crucial. With the right SEO strategy, you can do that.
What is SEO and How Does it Work?
SEO stands for search engine optimization and it is the process of improving the ranking of a site on search engine result pages (SERP). For example, when people search for anything related to your business, you would want your site to appear first. This can be achieved with solid SEO.
If you want to learn SEO skills and understand how to improve website ranking on Google, then this search engine optimization tutorial for beginners is for you.
00:00Because of all the abuse we talked about in the last video,
00:09Google had to change and adapt to maintain its spot as the number one search provider.
00:14And to do that, it had to clamp down hard on those who were gaming the system
00:19and penalize sites that were cheating to get to the top spot.
00:22It did this by looking for obviously spammy strategies and de-indexing or downgrading the sites.
00:30So, sites with keywords in their URL no longer enjoyed the same advantage.
00:36Sites with huge numbers of inbound links from low-quality websites were de-indexed.
00:42Sites caught buying links were de-indexed.
00:46Sites that stuffed keywords were severely punished.
00:49Sites that had lots of backlinks with the same anchor text were treated as highly suspect.
00:54And the list goes on and on.
00:57Meanwhile, Google started to show preference towards sites that were longer,
01:01that linked out to other quality resources, which previously would have hurt your SEO, and more.
01:08These changes came in the form of algorithm updates,
01:11which had recognizable animal names and which got a lot of press from the internet marketing community at the time.
01:17These were Penguin, which was designed to reduce the effectiveness of unnatural backlinks,
01:24and Panda, which was designed to favor sites that looked high quality.
01:30Google doesn't want a website owner to be able to artificially climb its SERPs.
01:34Rather, Google wants websites to climb the ranks only when they're genuinely valuable and popular with the audience.
01:41It wants to see natural, organic links that you haven't paid for,
01:45and it wants to see deep, relevant, and interesting content.
01:48The old techniques that were once used to spam Google became known as black hat SEO,
01:55and the industry entered a dark period.
02:00It's hard to overstate just what the impact of these algorithms changes had on the SEO industry at the time,
02:06and on countless other industries as well.
02:08These changes ended up completely de-indexing massive websites overnight.
02:15Sites that had followed conventional wisdom to get to the top spot on popular SERPs were now completely de-indexed,
02:21cutting off the vast majority of their traffic and sales.
02:25This led many to proclaim that SEO was dead,
02:28that it was no longer possible to game the system because you would be penalized for buying links or for stuffing keywords.
02:34And even if someone could break Google's new algorithm and work out a new way to game the system,
02:41it would only be a matter of time until Google changed its algorithms again.
02:46The industry as a whole was in trouble, and SEO became a dirty word.
02:51Many people felt that SEO and black hat SEO were synonymous,
02:56and more and more people began to turn to social media for marketing,
02:59with the likes of Facebook and Twitter massively on the rise.
03:04But was SEO really dead?
03:07Not at all. It was just going through a metamorphosis.
03:12SEO is not the techniques we use to get our sites to the top of Google.
03:16SEO is simply the objective of getting to the top of Google.
03:21Any technique you use to try to get more attention from Google could be considered SEO.
03:26So if Google wants us to create a high-quality website, then creating a high-quality website becomes SEO.
03:35The hard part is just unravelling what Google's idea of a high-quality website should look like.
03:41Keyword research is still useful, for example, but we now know that Google doesn't want us to overly stuff our websites with those search terms.
03:51Instead, the recommendation hovers at around 1-2% keyword density.
03:56So if you write a long article and include the search term a few times, that should be enough,
04:02as long as it's also in your code a little, or in your file name.
04:06It's also worth noting that Google looks for keywords in specific places in your content and gives those extra value.
04:13Google will consider it a strong sign if your keywords are used in your headers or in the first paragraph of your content.
04:20Google also looks for synonyms, though, and related language, which is something that we'll discuss more later on.
04:27And it no longer cares about how many links you can get.
04:30It cares far more about how high-quality those links are.
04:34So if your links are from lots of highly trusted websites, then you'll find it does great things for your ranking.
04:41Google is also now looking at things like bounce rates, how long someone spends on your website.
04:47And it's looking at how your site renders on mobile and how quickly it loads.
04:52You can now get penalized for typos and mistakes.
04:56And Google is also looking at social sharing signs.
04:59If you have lots of plus ones from Google+, for example, then this can have a large positive impact.
05:07In short, Google is looking for signs of quality, relevance, and great design.
05:12At the end of the day, Google does not care about you as a content creator.
05:18You're not Google's customer.
05:20Google's customer is the end user who searches for a key phrase because they want to get relevant information or find the answer to a question.
05:28So if you forget the specifics and instead make your aim to deliver high-quality content consistently targeted towards a specific subject matter, then your goals will be aligned with Google.
05:41That means Google will want to share your content with its users.
05:44And it means that each update and change Google makes should actually benefit you as a creator.
05:51This is what good SEO is about today.
05:55Forget trying to trick Google and instead think about your users and think about working with Google.
06:00that means Google.
06:06To know what the, where other workers will likely do not lose their.
06:14The public is in.
06:19The public is a part of and it makes it work better.