Search is the very first place where people go when they have a question. This is how the internet works today.

The average number of Google searches performed in every single second is 2.3 million!

Shocking, right? And there’s something even more shocking ...

Almost half of search sessions are lasting longer than a day!

In other words, people are using more and more time in order to find reliable, competing information before they make a decision and this is why SEO has become a vital necessity for online businesses. This is why you need to learn how to SEO a website! No matter how complex and efficient your marketing mix is, search engine optimization is going to be your primary channel to attract new visitors. You MUST learn how to SEO a website! Believe me, this is a fact. Accept it and embrace it.

Before anything else, you need to fully understand the whole “how to SEO a website” topic. So, let’s start with a few simple questions …

What is SEO?

SEO is the process of improving the visibility of a website in a search engine’s organic, unpaid results.

SEO is a set of quite complex rules, strategies and techniques used to increase the amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a given search engine, such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.

In plain English: whenever you enter a query in a search engine you’ll get a huge list with thousands or even millions of web results containing the query term, and SEO can help you to place your website in a monetizable position.

As strange as it may sound, the original idea of a “searchable database” predates the World Wide Web and even the internet. It began in 1945 when an american engineer named Vannevar Bush has described the “memex”, a hypothetical adjustable microfilm viewer with a structure analogous to that of hypertext. He published the essay “As We May Think” in which he predicted that “wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified”. The essay is also famous for predicting other things like personal computers, and the … internet. Which soon has arrived.

In the early days site directories were one of the first methods used to facilitate access to network-based informational resources. The Yahoo directory – launched in 1994 – was the first searchable directory. In the very same year Brian Pinkerton (University of Washington) has created and launched the very first fully-featured metasearch engine called WebCrawler. One year later the Lycos and the AltaVista appeared on the scene and for many years the latter one has become the biggest player in the field. But its days were already numbered …

In search of a dissertation theme a Stanford student named Larry Page has decided to explore the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web. His research project – nicknamed “BackRub” – had a very specific goal: “to develop the enabling technologies for a single, integrated and universal digital library”. In March 1996 when his crawler began exploring the web, Page laid the foundation of a new search engine … Google.

And today Google provides 2 trillion searches annually! In only two decades the “BackRub” project has evolved into a $500 billion worth giant, a giant which basically works exactly the same way as Page’s first crawler did. Let’s see how it works …

How to SEO a website, or how search engines work?

Search engines are designed to connect people with reliable, valuable and relevant information. It may sound simple and natural, but you should know, that we are talking about the biggest business in the world. Alphabet, the parent company of Google now worth about $500 billion! Having said that, it’s easy to understand: search engines cannot afford to deliver crummy results. They are getting smarter and smarter every day. As Adam Audette said …

The days of SEO being a game of outsmarting algorithms are over. Today content strategy and valuable, sustainable strategies are essential, not just tricks and links.

The very first thing you need to understand: the whole submitted web content – meaning over 1 billion websites! – is continuously crawled by search engines. Small software pieces – so-called spiders – follow links from one page to another and index literally everything they find on their way. In 2013 the Google Index has reached 100 million gigabytes with more than 30 trillion indexed pages! What does it mean? It means, that those spiders won’t – they simply cannot – visit your website on daily basis. Sometimes it can take o month or even two months to get your site re-indexed.

The second very important aspect: unlike humans, search engines are text-driven. They are performing complex, interrelated activities – such as crawling, indexing, processing, retrieving, etc – in order to “read” and to “understand” your website. Crawlers do not see images, videos, Flash elements, frames, Javascript segments, etc. All these goodies are completely invisible for spiders, therefore they will not be indexed and processed. They will be non-existent for search engines! I know, it sounds a bit scary, but don’t worry, it’s extremely easy to avoid these problems. All you have to do, is to use a free spider simulator to “reveal” the items that are invisible for crawlers.

Once a web page has been crawled, its content will be indexed and stored in a giant database, from where it can be retrieved anytime. Normally, you’ll have to submit a request to a given search engine in order to get your site indexed, but sometimes – when a crawler is landing on your site after following an external link – it just happens automatically. How long does it take Google or Bing to index your site once you have submitted your request? Well, the time can – and will – vary. Usually a newly added site should be crawled and indexed within 4 days to 4 weeks. If you want to find out if your site is indexed in a given search engine yet, all you have to do, is to perform a simple search, typing “site:yourdomainname.com” in the search bar. At this very moment this method works well using the main search box both on Google and Bing.

That’s really cool, but what if you can’t find your site in the search engines? Well, most likely your website is unfindable, uncrawlable or un-indexable. In this case you will have to verify the general settings, the robots.txt, the sitemap and the navigational structure of your website to find the problem that prevents the spiders from crawling and indexing your website. Don’t worry, we are going to discuss these issues later.

Once your site has been indexed you can start thinking about how to improve your initial rankings. When a search engine receives a search request the search string is compared with all the indexed pages existing in the database, and various – extremely complex, continuously changing – algorithms will calculate the relevancy and the popularity of each and every webpage that contains the search term in its index. Each search engine has its own rules and algorithms. That’s why different search engines give different results for the very same search query or search string.

As you’ll see, these almighty algorithms will analyze hundreds and hundreds of factors and variables to decide the ranking you deserve. There are variables that you can’t control – for example, trending topics -, and there are variables that you can optimize to get better rankings. This optimization effort is called search engine optimization or SEO.

Done well, will provide outstanding results and an impressive ROI.

Done imperfectly or poorly, will harm the visibility of your online business. If you choose to ignore it … you’ll become invisible.

Now, before we move forward, is highly recommended to get familiar with a few basic terms and concepts. Here are three essential glossaries:

Wordpress glossary

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/training/wordpress-glossary-...

SEOglossary

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/training/seo-glossary-for-be...

Internet marketing glossary

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/training/internet-marketing-...