We’re here to remove any confusion or complications around SEO – with some insight on how artificial intelligence (AI) in digital marketing fits into the picture. Once you understand the fundamentals, you can learn how to leverage SEO to drive traffic and generate quality leads.

The Key Elements of SEO

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So, let’s get started to see how SEO works. What you’ll learn in this blog is:

• What is SEO?

• What are the three pillars of SEO?

• Paid search vs. organic search – the differences and similarities

• How do search engines work?

• How does Google order and rank search results (and how to optimize for RankBrain)?

• What is an SEO strategy?

• How to set objectives for your SEO strategy

• 3 examples of SEO objectives

• How to set objectives for different business types

• How to become an SEO specialist

• What skills do you need to become an SEO specialist?

• What can you earn as an SEO specialist?

• AI and SEO – what’s coming?

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Let’s start by asking an obvious question: what exactly is SEO?

SEO stands for ‘Search Engine Optimization’, which is the process of getting traffic from free, organic, editorial, or natural search results in search engines. It aims to improve your website’s position in search results pages (SERPs). Remember, the higher the website is listed, the more people will see it.

There’s a great graphic created by Rand Fiskin, co-founder of Moz, that takes from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs’ pyramid. Fishkin’s ‘Mozlow’s Hierarchy of SEO Needs’ looks at how people should execute SEO.

Top tip: SEO is no longer confined to search engines like Google or Bing. It’s also important to consider social networks to rank videos on YouTube and leverage TikTok as a search engine as more people turn to them to find information.

What are the three pillars of SEO?

As a digital marketer, knowing how to get your brand, website, or company found by searchers is a core skill, and understanding how SEO is evolving will keep you at the top of your game.

While SEO changes frequently in small ways, its key principles do not. We can break SEO into three core components or pillars that you need to be familiar with – and action regularly:

• Technical Optimization: Technical Optimization is the process of completing activities on your site that are designed to improve SEO but are not related to content. It often happens behind the scenes. A simple example of technical optimization is submitting your sitemap to Google.

• On-Page Optimization: On-Page Optimization is the process of ensuring the content on your site is relevant and provides a great user experience. It includes targeting the right keywords within your content and can be done through a content management system like WordPress, Wix, Drupal, Joomla, Magento, or Shopify.

• Off-Page Optimization: Off-Page Optimization is the process of enhancing your site’s search engine rankings through activities outside of the site. This is largely driven by high-quality backlinks, which help to build the site’s reputation.

Paid Search vs. Organic Search – The Differences and Similarities

From the outset, it’s important that you understand the differences and similarities between the organic, natural search synonymous with SEO and paid search.

What are the differences between paid and organic search?

There are five key differences between paid and organic search. Let’s look at each one of them.

• Position: The first difference is that paid search results appear at the top of search engine results pages, and organic results appear beneath them.

• Time: Another key difference between paid and organic search is time. With paid search, you can get results quickly whereas, with organic search, results take more time – often weeks, months, and even years.

• Payment: As the name suggests, you pay for paid search traffic, with pay-per-click (PPC) marketing on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis.

• ROI: In terms of the return on investment (ROI), it’s much easier to measure paid search. That’s partly because Google provides more keyword data that you can capture in Google Analytics (GA4).

• Share of Traffic: Research from BrightEdge found that organic search is responsible for 53% of all site traffic compared to paid at 15%. So the lion’s share of clicks are actually on the organic results.

How do search engines actually work?

That’s why Google algorithm updates can have a huge impact on brands and marketers so you need to keep on top of them.

There are three steps to how search engines work: crawling, indexing, and ranking.

1. Crawling: Search engines send out web crawlers to find new pages and record information about them. Their purpose is to discover new web pages and to periodically check the content on pages they’ve previously visited.

2. Indexing: Indexing is when a search engine decides whether or not it is going to use the content that it has crawled. If a crawled web page is deemed worthy by a search engine, it will be added to its index.

3. Ranking: Ranking can only happen after the crawling and indexing steps are complete. Once a search engine has crawled and indexed your site, your site can be ranked.

How does Google order and rank search results?

Google has a collection of algorithms such as Hummingbird, Panda, and RankBrain that are responsible for deciding how to order and rank search engine results.

RankBrain uses artificial intelligence to understand search queries better by connecting them to similar search queries. It allows Google to provide better search engine results by understanding ‘search intent.’

For ranking, you should also consider Google’s EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) framework.