SEO

Search Engine Optimization

How SEO works

You might think of a search engine as a website you visit to type (or speak) a question into a box and Google, Yahoo!, Bing, or whatever search engine you're using magically replies with a long list of links to webpages that could potentially answer your question.

That's true. But have you ever stopped to consider what's behind those magical lists of links?

Here's how it works: Google (or any search engine you're using) has a crawler that goes out and gathers information about all the content they can find on the Internet. The crawlers bring all those 1s and 0s back to the search engine to build an index. That index is then fed through an algorithm that tries to match all that data with your query.

Learning SEO

This section of our site is here to help you learn anything you want about SEO. If you're completely new to the topic, start at the very beginning and read the Beginner's Guide to SEO. If you need advice on a specific topic, dig in wherever suits you.

Here's a general overview:

Building an SEO-friendly site

Once you're ready to start walking that SEO walk, it's time to apply those SEO techniques to a site, whether it's brand new or an old one you're improving.

These pages will help you get started with everything from selecting an SEO-friendly domain name to best practices for internal links.

Content and related markup

A site isn't really a site until you have content. But SEO for content has enough specific variables that we've given it its own section. Start here if you're curious about keyword research, how to write SEO-friendly copy, and the kind of markup that helps search engines understand just what your content is really about.

On-site topics

You've already learned a lot about on-site topics by delving into content and related markup. Now it's time to get technical with information about robots.txt.

Link-related topics

Dig deep into everything you ever needed to know about links from anchor text to redirection. Read this series of pages to understand how and when to use nofollow and whether guest blogging is actually dead. If you're more into the link building side of things (working to improve the rankings on your site by earning links), go straight to the Beginner's Guide to Link Building.

Other optimization

Congratulations! You've mastered the ins and outs of daily SEO and are now ready for some advanced topics. Make sure all that traffic has the easiest time possible converting with conversion rate optimization (CRO), then go micro level with local SEO or take that site global with international SEO.

The evolution of SEO

Search engine algorithms change frequently and SEO tactics evolve in response to those changes. So if someone is offering you SEO advice that doesn't feel quite right, check in with the specific topic page.

For a more technical look at SEO, check out this short video from Rand Fishkin.

Go forth and SEO…