{"id":1193,"date":"2026-08-31T22:59:52","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T15:59:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/seotodidact.com\/blog\/?p=1193"},"modified":"2026-08-31T23:16:53","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T16:16:53","slug":"what-is-seo-easy-explanation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seotodidact.com\/blog\/what-is-seo-easy-explanation\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is SEO? An Easy Explanation for Beginners"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SEO stands for <\/span><b>Search Engine Optimization<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, it is the practice of improving a website and its content so search engines can understand it and people can find it through search.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When someone searches for something on a search engine (let\u2019s say Google), they see many results. SEO helps your website become more eligible to appear in those results and improves its chances of being found by the right people (your target audiences).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But SEO is not just about ranking higher. A good SEO strategy also considers what people are searching for, what they expect to find, whether search engines can access and understand your content, and whether your website can turn search visibility into useful business results.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Let&#8217;s start with the basic meaning of SEO.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>What Is SEO?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SEO is the process of improving a website so that search engines can better <\/span><b>crawl, understand, index, and serve its content<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, while also making the content useful for people who search for it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google describes SEO as helping search engines understand your content and helping users find your site through a search engine.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In simple terms, SEO connects three things:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>People search for something \u2192 search engines find and understand relevant pages \u2192 people discover those pages in search results.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SEO can involve many different activities, including improving website structure, creating useful content, understanding search intent, improving internal links, earning relevant links from other websites, and monitoring search performance.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There is no single SEO task that makes a website successful. SEO is a collection of activities that work together.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>SEO as part of digital marketing<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SEO is one part of <\/span><b>digital marketing<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Digital marketing covers different ways of reaching people online. These can include:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SEO<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Paid search<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Social media marketing<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Email marketing<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Display advertising<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Content marketing<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Affiliate marketing<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SEO focuses on getting visibility through <\/span><b>organic search<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Organic search means the unpaid search results. You do not pay Google for every click from an organic result.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For example, imagine you sell running shoes. Someone searches for \u201cbest running shoes for beginners\u201d. If Google considers your page relevant and useful, it may show the page in its search results.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If the person clicks your result, they visit your website through organic search. But traffic is not the final goal for every website. For a business, the more important question is what happens after that traffic arrives.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>SEO as part of a business<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">From a business perspective, SEO is a way to reach people who are already searching for something related to your business, and turn them into a purchaser.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For example, a person searching for \u201cbest accounting software for small business\u201d may be closer to making a purchase than someone who is simply browsing accounting-related topics.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If your website appears for that search, SEO can help you reach that potential customer. The business value can look like this:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Search visibility \u2192 clicks \u2192 website visitors \u2192 leads or sales \u2192 revenue<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is why businesses may invest time, money, and people into SEO.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, ranking and traffic alone do not guarantee business results. The traffic needs to be relevant, the page needs to satisfy the user&#8217;s needs, and the website needs to give visitors a reason to take the next step.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Businesses may also look at metrics such as:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Conversions:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Actions that matter to the business, such as purchases, form submissions, or sign-ups.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Revenue:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Money generated from customers.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Acquisition cost:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> How much it costs the business to acquire a customer.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>ROI:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The return a business gets compared with what it invests.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, from a business perspective, SEO is not simply about getting more visitors. It is about getting the right people from search and creating business value from that visibility.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>What Is \u2018Organic\u2019 In SEO?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you are still confused about what \u201corganic\u201d means, it\u2019s when a user does an organic or manual way of searching for information. It is like this:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The user opens their browser and heads to any search engine (let\u2019s say Google or Bing).<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They then type something into the search bar, let\u2019s say \u201crunning shoes,\u201d and click enter.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The search engine then shows approximately 10 results on the first page.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The user then clicks on one of those results and lands on the website\u2019s page.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And yes, that one user that is visiting your website is called organic traffic. So they come by searching it on search engines, not by social media posts or from a friend that sent them your web page\u2019s URL.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Terms in SEO You Have to Know<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Before you dive deep into SEO, there are some terms you must have known. It can be really confusing when you are starting to learn SEO without having a clue what the terminology means.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You do not need to memorize everything at once, but understanding these common terms will make the rest of your SEO learning much easier:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>SEO:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Search Engine Optimization, the practice of improving a website&#8217;s presence in search engines.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Search engine:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> A system such as Google that helps people find information on the web.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>SERP:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Short for Search Engine Results Page. It is the page that appears after you perform a search.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Organic search:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Search results that are not paid advertisements.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Keyword:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> A word or phrase people use when searching for something.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Search intent:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The reason behind a person&#8217;s search and what they are trying to find or accomplish.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Crawling:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The process search engines use to discover and access URLs.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Rendering:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The process of processing a page so search engines can see content that may depend on JavaScript.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Indexing:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The process of analyzing and storing information about a page in a search engine&#8217;s index.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Ranking:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The process of determining which search results should appear and in what order.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Backlink:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> A link from another website to your website.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Internal link:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> A link from one page on your website to another page on the same website.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Search traffic:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Visitors who reach your website through search engines.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Conversion:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> An action that matters to a website or business, such as making a purchase, submitting a form, or signing up.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You will see these terms often as you continue learning SEO, so getting familiar with them now will make the next topics easier to understand.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Why Is SEO Important?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SEO matters because simply having a website does not mean people will find it. You can publish an excellent article, product page, or service page, but if the people who need it cannot discover it through search, that content may not bring much value.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And ranking alone is not enough anymore. Here are the break downs:<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>1. Ranking is not enough<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A page appearing on the second page of Google is unlikely to receive as much attention as a page near the top of the results. Even appearing on the first page does not guarantee many clicks.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The higher results generally get more visibility, but being in the top three still does not guarantee that someone will choose your page.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A searcher may choose another result because its title looks more useful, its brand is more familiar, or its snippet better matches what they want.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There is another important change in search: <\/span><b>AI Overviews<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google can show an AI-generated overview for some searches. These overviews can summarize information and provide links to relevant web pages. Google says its AI features continue to use the same foundational SEO practices, and pages need to be indexed and eligible to appear in Google Search to be eligible as supporting links in AI Overviews or AI Mode.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This means a traditional search result is no longer the only way a person may discover information from Google.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So think beyond:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;How do I get into the top three?&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A better question is:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>&#8220;How can my website or brand become visible when people search for something relevant to what I offer?&#8221;<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That visibility can happen through traditional search results and, where applicable, AI-powered search experiences.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>2. No clicks means no opportunity<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For a website that depends on organic search traffic, the basic relationship is simple:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>No clicks \u2192 no organic traffic \u2192 fewer opportunities for leads, sales, or brand discovery.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Imagine you sell SEO tools. Your product page ranks for an important keyword, but almost nobody visits the page. The ranking itself does not create many business opportunities.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On the other hand, relevant search traffic can bring people to your website when they already have a problem or need that your business can help with. This does not mean every search visit will become a customer.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A visitor may read your article and leave. Another person may visit several times before becoming a customer. Someone else may discover your brand through search but later return directly or through another channel.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SEO is therefore one part of the larger customer journey. Its job is to help people discover your website or brand when they are looking for something relevant.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>3. Good SEO matters in the AI era<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Search is changing because people can now use AI-powered search experiences to find and understand information.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This does not make SEO irrelevant. In fact, Google says its AI Overviews and AI Mode use content from the Google Search index, and that existing SEO best practices remain relevant for these experiences.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Think about a simple example. Imagine someone asks an AI-powered search experience:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;What are the best SEO tools for a small business?&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Your competitor is mentioned in the answer. Your brand is not. The user may never discover your business through that search.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is one reason SEO is becoming broader than simply trying to rank a page for a keyword. Your website needs to be discoverable, understandable, useful, and eligible to appear in search experiences.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That does not mean there is a secret technique that guarantees your brand will appear in AI answers. Google says there are no additional technical requirements or special optimizations required specifically for AI Overviews or AI Mode. The same fundamental SEO practices still matter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The goal is still the same:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Make your website easy for search systems to discover and understand, and make your content useful for people.<\/b><\/p>\n<h2><b>How Does SEO Work?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To understand how SEO works, it helps to look at it from two perspectives; from the <\/span><b>search engine&#8217;s perspective<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and from an <\/span><b>SEO Specialist\u2019s perspective<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>From a search engine&#8217;s perspective<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google Search works through three main stages:<\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Crawling<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Rendering<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Indexing<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Serving search results<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rendering happens as part of Google&#8217;s process of processing pages, especially when JavaScript is involved.<\/span><\/p>\n<h4><b>1. Crawling<\/b><\/h4>\n<p><b>Crawling<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is the process of discovering and accessing pages on the web. Google uses automated programs called <\/span><b>spider crawlers<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to find URLs and fetch their content.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google can discover pages through links from pages it already knows about, as well as through sitemaps and other methods.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For example:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Your homepage links to your SEO guide. Google already knows your homepage, so it may follow that internal link and discover the guide.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Once Google discovers the URL, it may crawl the page. Crawling does not mean the page will automatically appear in search results. It only means Google has accessed the page as part of its search process.<\/span><\/p>\n<h4><b>2. Rendering<\/b><\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some websites rely heavily on JavaScript to display content. In those cases, Google may need to <\/span><b>render<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the page to see the content that the browser would normally display.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google explains that during crawling, it can render pages and execute JavaScript using a recent version of Chrome. This is one reason technical SEO matters.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If important content cannot be properly accessed or processed, search engines may have difficulty understanding the page.<\/span><\/p>\n<h4><b>3. Indexing<\/b><\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After crawling a page, Google analyzes and processes its content. This is called <\/span><b>indexing<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The information Google processes can include the page&#8217;s text, images, videos, title, and other information. Google may also determine whether a page is a duplicate of another page and select a canonical URL.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can think of Google&#8217;s index as a huge database containing information about pages Google has processed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But there is an important point:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Being crawled does not guarantee that a page will be indexed.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google says that not every page it processes will be indexed.<\/span><\/p>\n<h4><b>4. Ranking<\/b><\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When someone searches, Google looks through its index and returns results that its systems consider relevant and useful for that query. This is where <\/span><b>ranking<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> comes in.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google uses automated ranking systems and many signals to determine which results should appear and in what order. Google says relevance can be determined using hundreds of factors, including things such as the user&#8217;s location, language, and device.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Search algorithms are continually updated. So SEO is not about finding one permanent formula that guarantees the number-one position.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Instead, SEO is about improving the things you can control:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Your understanding of search intent<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Your website&#8217;s accessibility<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Your content<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Your page structure<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Your internal linking<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Your technical setup<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Your overall usefulness to the people you want to reach<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google does not guarantee that a page will be crawled, indexed, or served in search results, even when a website follows its guidelines.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>From an SEO Specialist&#8217;s perspective<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">From an SEO Specialist&#8217;s perspective, SEO is the work of improving different parts of a website so that it can perform better in search. The exact work depends on the website and its problems, but it can broadly include three major areas:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Technical SEO<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: Focuses on the technical parts of a website that can affect how search engines access, crawl, render, and understand it. This includes crawl optimization, indexability, robots.txt, XML sitemaps, site speed and page experience, structured data, parameter handling, and many more.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>On-page SEO<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: Focuses on the content and elements on your own pages. This includes page title, meta title, meta description, slug, internal links, CTA, heading structures, and many more.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Off-page SEO<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: Focuses on signals and activities that happen outside your own website. One well-known example is earning relevant links from other websites, also when you posted your article on social media and then people clicked it and landed on your web page.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All of these 3 areas are connected. For example, you can write excellent content, but if search engines cannot access the page properly, your content may struggle to appear in search. You can also have a technically healthy website, but if your content does not satisfy the searcher&#8217;s intent, technical improvements alone will not make the page useful.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And if your website is really nice but no other website is giving you credit (backlink) then you might get outranked by other websites in the same niche as you but they have more backlink comes from relevant web.That is why SEO is better understood as a system rather than a single task.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>How to Do SEO for Beginners<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you are completely new to SEO, you do not need to learn everything at once. Start with the basics and work through SEO step by step.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A simple starting process looks like this:<\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Understand your website and audience.<\/b><b><br \/>\n<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">First of all, know the audience. Make sure to address who you want to talk to with your content. Then, know what your website offers, who it is for, and what problems you can help solve.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Find relevant topics and keywords.<\/b><b><br \/>\n<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Learn what your target audience searches for and identify topics that are relevant to your website.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Understand search intent.<\/b><b><br \/>\n<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Before creating a page, understand what people are actually trying to find when they search for a particular query.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Create useful content.<\/b><b><br \/>\n<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Build pages that genuinely answer the user&#8217;s question or help them complete their goal. Google also recommends creating helpful, reliable, people-first content.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Make your website accessible to search engines.<\/b><b><br \/>\n<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Check whether important pages can be crawled, rendered, and indexed. Technical issues can prevent search engines from properly accessing your content.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Improve your on-page SEO.<\/b><b><br \/>\n<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Make your titles, headings, content, links, images, and other page elements clear and useful.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Build useful internal links.<\/b><b><br \/>\n<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Link related pages together so users and search engines can discover important content more easily.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Work on off-page SEO.<\/b><b><br \/>\n<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Build your website&#8217;s reputation by creating content and resources that other relevant websites may want to reference or link to.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Measure and improve.<\/b><b><br \/>\n<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Use tools such as Google Search Console to understand how your website performs in search, then use the data to find areas that need improvement.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is only the starting point. Each of these areas can become its own SEO topic, which is why learning SEO is easier when you learn one concept at a time. And I encourage you to build and maintain your own website so you can practice SEO without being worried your site will break.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Can You Learn SEO by Yourself?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><b>Yes, you can learn SEO by yourself.<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> But it is relatively difficult if you do not have someone you ask for when you are feeling confused. Yes, there is AI but there is also limited knowledge compared to the real human experience.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Either way, you can start learning by yourself by reading about:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How search engines work<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Keyword research<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Search intent<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Content creation<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On-page SEO<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Basic technical SEO<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Internal linking<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Basic off-page SEO<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can also use free resources and tools to learn and practice.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, SEO can become much more complex as a website grows.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A large website may have thousands or millions of URLs, complicated technical systems, international versions, JavaScript applications, large-scale content problems, or difficult internal linking structures. In those situations, specialized SEO knowledge can become more useful.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But you do not need to wait until you become an expert before doing SEO. Start with the basics, apply what you learn, observe the results, and continue learning.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>What Should You Learn After SEO 101?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now that you understand the basics of SEO, the next step is to go deeper into each part. I already break it down for the steps. You can take a look here: <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/seotodidact.com\/step-to-learn-seo\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">step on learning SEO<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I will make more content about SEO regularly to complete the step. It is all free, so you do not have to worry about buying an e-book. Stay tuned!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I also highly recommend you to <\/span><b>build, run, and optimize <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">your own website, just like mine right now. SEO is about practice since the trouble is various and there are many ways of troubleshooting it.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, it is the practice of improving a website and its content so search engines [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seotodidact.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seotodidact.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seotodidact.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seotodidact.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seotodidact.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1193"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/seotodidact.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1196,"href":"https:\/\/seotodidact.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1193\/revisions\/1196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seotodidact.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seotodidact.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seotodidact.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}