The purpose of SEO is getting traffic from organic (non-paid) search engines like Google and Bing.
By using SEO, we can help our website rank higher in organic search results.
Higher rankings mean increased website traffic. This can result in higher conversion rates for a business (e.g., sales and sign-ups).
Theses organic search results are affected by complex algorithms.
Google uses 200 ranking factors in their algorithm.
Bellow is an example of Google Search Results.
Notice that google includes a lot of different search features.
Google is by far the most popular Search Engine:
But it is not the only game in town.
Below is a screenshot of duckduckgo.com Search Results page.
Because it doesn’t track IP addresses and personal data, DuckDuckGo is great for those valuing privacy in web searches.
How do search engines work?
Below is a simplified, yet accurate, version of this process
1. Crawling
Search Engines use crawlers, also known as bots, to collect online information. These crawlers learn the web page’s context, examining website navigation menus and links.
2. Indexing
Search engines process the crawled pages in a huge database called index. This process is called indexing, and involves examining content, keywords, images, and other elements to grasp the page’s topic.
3. Ranking
When a user searches for something, the search engine retrieves relevant pages from its index and ranks them based on various factors.
Key Aspects of SEO
The main types of SEO are:
On-Page SEO – Optimizing website content, meta tags, headings, URLs, and images for relevant keywords.
Off-Page SEO – Building backlinks, social signals, and improving the website’s authority and reputation.
Technical SEO – Enhancing site speed, mobile-friendliness, structured data, and crawlability, indexing, information architecture, etc.
Local SEO – Optimizing for local searches, Google My Business, and location-based keywords.
Do Web Developers need knowledge of SEO skills?
Most web developers only need a basic grasp of SEO.
Proper HTML and alt attributes, help Search Engine understand and index our webpages. Also, making a website load fast, essential for SEO, is always in a web developer’s checklist.
Although my blog doesn’t support comments, feel free to reply via email or X.