Search Engine Optimisation (SEO to the web heads of the world) is in simple terms a way to Optimize the way a Search Engine ranks your website. This helps you by pointing people to your website when they search for specific criteria.

In the SEO realm, Organic Search is used to describe people searching using a search engine for whatever they are looking for. Organic Search plays a big part in this because it accounts for 53% of ALL website traffic.

So whenever someone wants to go somewhere or do something, find information, research or buy a product/service, they typically start with a search.

How many searches are done a year you probably didn't ask? Trillions. This makes being 'search engine friendly' on any platform where people can search for your brand or services.

How does SEO Work?

The Broad strokes of SEO are that it works through a combination of:

People: The person or team responsible for doing or ensuring that the strategic, tactical and operational SEO work is completed.

Processes: The actions taken to make the work more efficient.

Technology: The platforms and tools used.

Activities: The end product, or output

Six critical areas in combination make SEO a great tool.

1. Understanding how search engines work

Traditional Search engines like Google for example have four separate stages of search:

  • Crawling: Search engines use crawlers to discover pages on the web by following links and using sitemaps.
  • Rendering: Search engines generate how the page will look using HTML, JavaScript and CSS information.
  • Indexing: Search engines analyze the content and metadata of the pages it has discovered and add them to a database.
  • Ranking: Complex algorithms look at a variety of signals to determine whether a page is relevant and of high-enough quality.

Optimization for Google is different from optimizing for search other platforms like YouTube or Amazon.

2. Researching

Research is a key part of SEO. Some forms of research that will improve SEO performance include:

  • Audience research: It's important to understand your target audience or market. Who are they? What are their pain points? What questions do they have that you can answer?
  • Keyword research: This process helps you identify and incorporate relevant search terms into your pages – and understand demand and competition.
  • Competitor research: What are your competitors doing? What are their strengths and weaknesses?
  • Brand/business research: What are their goals – and how can SEO help achieve them?
  • Website research: A variety of SEO audits can uncover opportunities and issues.
  • SERP analysis: This will help you understand the search intent for queries and create appropriate content.

3. Planning

An SEO strategy is your long-term action plan. You need to set goals – and a plan for how you will reach them.

Think of it your SEO strategy as a roadmap. The path you take likely will change and evolve over time – but the destination should remain clear and unchanged.

Your SEO plan may include things such as:

  • Setting goals and expectations
  • Defining meaningful KPIs and metrics
  • Deciding how projects will be implemented
  • Coordinating with stakeholders
  • Choosing tools/technology
  • Hiring and training team members
  • Setting budgets
  • Measuring results
  • Documenting strategy and process

4. Creating and implementing

Once all the research is done, it's time to turn ideas into action. That means:

  • Creating new content: Advising your content team on what content needs to be created.
  • Recommending or implementing changes to existing pages: This could include updating content, adding internal links, incorporating keywords, or identifying other optimization opportunities.
  • Removing old, outdated or low-quality content: The types of content that aren't ranking well or helping achieve SEO goals.

5. Monitoring and maintaining

You need to know when something goes wrong or breaks on your website. Monitoring is critical.

You need to know if traffic drops to a critical page, pages become slow, unresponsive or fall out of the index, your entire website goes offline, links break, or any other number of potential catastrophic issues.

6. Analyzing, assessing and reporting on performance

If you don't measure SEO, you can't improve it. To make data-driven decisions about SEO, you'll need to use:

  • Website analytics: Set up and use tools (at minimum, free tools such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools) to collect performance data.
  • Tools and platforms: There are many "all-in-one" platforms that offer multiple tools, or you can choose specific SEO tools for specific tasks.

This is a basic description of what goes into SEO for your website. It's vastness as a subject means that it is no small feat to pull off a successful SEO implementation.