Hey, hello there. You found us finally. Your curiosity has finally led you to us. However, do you ever wonder “How?” How did you end up here? Out of the 20 million+ results that loaded up when you searched for “How does SEO work?” why was this page, recommended to you at the top over all the others? Well, the answer is in the question itself. SEO or also known as Search Engine Optimisation is the reason why you are here. You see, you did not search for this particular webpage directly, but the reason why you still ended up here lies in the content of this blog itself.

Search Engines and SEO.

Now, we know your curiosity might be, heightened and you must be intrigued as to what SEO exactly is, and more importantly how does SEO even work and that is what we are here for today. We are going to tell you today how this mysterious art, works. Moreover, how you can use it for your own advantage but first let us learn about how search engines work, and What SEO is.

Search engines are almost magical, you search for a query and they always return you the most relevant results. For example, you just listened to a song but you only remembered the rhythm and not the name. You searched for the rhythm and you got the exact song with its lyrics as the top result. How does this even happen? The search engines implement extremely complicated algorithms to rank the different pages depending on more than 200+ factors.

Generally, Search engines employ three primary functions: Crawl, Index, and Rank. The first step is crawling, search engines such as Google employs automated programs known as “Spiders” to scavenge the entire internet for relevant content irrespective of the format. The spiders start out by locating a few webpages and then hopping to different webpages using the links associated with the previous URL. By doing this, the spiders or crawlers encounter newer content which they then “Index” into their database for future reference.

The Ranking is the third and most crucial step; this is where a Google-like search engine excels the most. Whenever someone performs a search on Google, the search engine scavenges through a huge database and then orders all the webpages it deems relevant based on more than 200 factors. The Ranking step is where all the magic really happens and search results are refined. This is the step where SEO is, performed so that the webpages can be, ranked at the top of the Search Engine Results Page or SERP.

The reason why search engines employ such complicated mechanisms is that they want to stay relevant and find the best and most accurate results for you.

Search Engines also make money. How would they make money you ask? Well, the answer to this is simple. Even though, you do not have to pay a single penny to use a search engine for searching literally anything. There are people and companies who use the internet to host their ads. Search engines charge for hosting ads, and obviously, people are only going to pay those who are the most relevant and have the highest usage.

Therefore, when search engines try to provide the most relevant and optimised results, more number of users start using them and choose that particular search engine over any other. Companies find this very beneficial as they can now publish their ads to a huge amount of people now and search engines end up making money by hosting their ads.

As more users start using the search engine, the number of queries increases too. In such a case, SEO turns out to be very useful. It is very important for a website or a business to maintain its online presence as the traffic increases. SEO is a digital marketing technique that focuses on this exact issue. There are usually two different types of SEO techniques: 1) On-Page SEO and 2) Off-page SEO.

Both of these techniques have only one aim to make your website more friendly and visible to the search engine crawlers improving the ranking. In summary, SEO is the art of improving the ranking of a website in the unpaid section or the “organic listings” of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). SEO is the magic that you need to work on your website and all of its content so that the search engine ranks your website at the top.

How does SEO work?

Now that you have understood about how search engines work and what SEO is, it is time for you to know about How SEO works. However, let us first understand why you even need it. It is true that as the internet has developed over the years almost everything is now just one Google search away.

Almost every single business today has a website, and the competition is getting tougher every day. A simple search query can return more than 20 million results and statistics say that the first five results get more than 67% of the total clicks. This fact can be enough to understand the importance of SEO. In addition, considering the competition among various businesses SEO is the only tool, which can help a business, take a lead over others.

As discussed earlier, SEO is the art of improving the ranking on SERP by optimising the content on the webpage itself. The Spiders are responsible for crawling through the internet searching for relevant content based on keywords and then ranking them based on On-page and Off-page factors. On-page factors are those, which are concerned with the content of the webpage itself. The different elements such as titles, content, loading speed, URLs, images, alternate tags for the images, etc. and all the elements related to the structure of the webpage itself are the factors that need to be optimised in On-page SEO technique.

The Off-page factors are in general references from other websites to yours. These factors depend on the relevancy of what your website offers for other websites. Example – Classifieds, Directory Submission, Slideshow where you register and post in other sites for your website.

Let's make it more simple: On-Page is when you optimize your website(on-page) and Off make is when you optimize your website outside your website. (Off Page).

However, as the law of balance is, applied to the universe, it is also applicable to SEO. Even in SEO, there are two types: 1) White hat SEO and 2) Black hat SEO. White hat SEO is, used to build a sustainable business, the techniques used in this type of SEO conform to all the rules applicable by a search engine. White hat SEO is, focused on making content that is much more pleasing to the human visitors to the website than the search engine itself. We focus on providing relevant content, well-labelled images, relevant links, and references, avoiding plagiarism in the content, etc. in White hat SEO.

Black hat SEO is somewhat of an unethical way to optimise the ranking of a website. In this type, we focus more on optimising the website for the search engine than the visitor. This means duplicate content, invisible text, re-directing to other websites, Non-relevant links are, used to achieve the goal of rank optimisation and do not pose any significant benefit to the visitor. However, Black hat SEO is vulnerable and usually, the search engines ban the websites using these techniques frequently.

In summary, a good SEO includes modifying the website such that it consists of quality and fresh content, makes the right use of keywords, has relevant links and references, and conforms to the search engine rules. Moreover, good SEO will make sure that the business remains relevant in the end. It also makes sure that the search engine ranks the webpage in the best possible manner so that it stays on the first page of the SERP. Again, as said earlier SEO is an art and you are the artist. SEO is a very iterative process as the search engine algorithm rules keep on changing continuously. You need to understand the basic principles of SEO and apply them repeatedly to make sure that your business remains at the top.

Conclusion

Now that you know about what SEO is and how it works, all you need to do is start applying those principles. On a high-level overview, SEO is not such a difficult task. Although it can be a bit challenging for a beginner. However, as you will start delving more into this concept, you will start to realise the sheer depth and vastness of it. This can become a bit overwhelming in a very short time and at such a time, you will need some expert help.

This is where we can help you. Kolkata School of Digital Marketing is always ready for your assistance. As it says in our name, we are an advanced digital marketing training institute situated in Kolkata. We provide you with various courses, which include SEO, and Digital Marketing, we also provide you with paid internships and guarantee 100% placements assistance.

Our sole aim is to make people love Digital marketing as much as we do, and help you become a future digital marketer. Contact us today, to begin with, your journey of becoming a successful digital marketer and Search Engine Optimiser.