What Is SEO and How Does It Work?

Whenever you dip your toes into creating digital content, it is inevitable that you will run into the term “SEO.” This jargon is used frequently and often dropped into conversation without much explanation.

So what is SEO? A standard “SEO” meaning is Search Engine Optimization and usually refers to the strategies designed to bring your content or website to the top of the results page when someone googles a keyword or search term that fits what you are putting out there.

How SEO works, step by step

Believe it or not, the internet doesn’t magically know what is on your website. Search engine optimization is both an incredibly simple and complex process that anyone can take advantage of in order to get organic, unpaid reach.

From the search engine side:

1. Search engines employ programming known as web crawlers or spiders - a program that goes through each and every website and indexes the content. These crawlers basically are taking a tally of the keywords and terms that they see in your content. Web crawlers are constantly going and checking for new content and taking stock of different aspects of websites (like if a site is optimized for mobile users or not). There are different types of SEO, known as on-page SEO and off-page SEO, where the crawlers look at factors within your website, like individual pages, and your website as a whole.
2. Once the tally is made, search engines decide what content or sites are best suited to be put at the top of their search results for any given keyword, topic, or search term. The idea of what is “best” comes down to a multitude of factors: how recent the information is, how relevant it is, if the site is optimized for computers vs mobile users, and so on and so forth. Some search engines use over 200 different factors to determine what content to put at the top of their searches.

From the content creator’s side:

1. You create a website and put content on it.
2. People put in search terms and your content gets put into the search results for free!

How do you do SEO for a website?

How do beginners do SEO? Where do you start with making sure your content is getting put up at the top where people are going to see it first? How do you make sure that your content is going to be rated as highly relevant? How do your from an SEO content strategy?

One of the easiest ways to start optimizing your content for SEO is to work with keywords. Think of the terms that people might search when looking for your business or product. Experiment with typing those into a search engine and see what comes up.

Using those keywords in your content, as well as posting frequently, can be an easy way to start tinkering with SEO. Another simple principle to keep in mind is linking - you can actually get more traffic and better SEO the more times someone links to your content.

One way to start building linking is by doing guest blogging on other websites where you can share your content in your author bio and build visibility for your content.

Another tactic to approach is to make sure that your website is as user-friendly as possible. Make sure that there are mobile optimization settings enabled and that the design is intuitive and flows well. All of these things help those web crawlers give your content a boost when it comes to where they place your content in the listing when someone searches a related term.

How can DemandJump help?

Looking for an SEO tutorial or more sophisticated SEO tools to help you get those prime search engine result spots? DemandJump can help.

Our one-click content outlines help you know exactly how to structure content for ranking quickly. Instead of spending precious time researching and trying to understand the ins and outs of SEO, DemandJump will give you the exact keywords to include and tell you exactly what your target customers are searching when they go online.

Our network of customer touchpoints around your chosen topic or keyword will help you know exactly what to include in your content to climb up the rankings. Our content marketing platform goes beyond just SEO though, with everything from intuitive consumer insight reports to cross-channel analytics, DemandJump helps you stop guessing at content marketing.

Try DemandJump free and see how your content can jump up in the search engine rankings!