SEO is a strategy or set of tactical operations designed to gain and grow organic traffic (often termed free traffic) from a search engine.
How do you Define SEO?
SEO works by building the best solution to a search query. Often posed as a Question/Answer scenario, because people are typically looking for a solution or answer to a question. People could be looking for a solution on how to buy something, and what the best solution/product or vendor is.
How does SEO Work?
Since Google’s founders’ first patent, we know that Google is built on a system colloquially known as PageRank. PageRank is based on how different websites link to each other and the authority that they have that they pass and how much is received based on mutual relevance. PageRank has been the source of much debate in the SEO Community and Google no longer refers to it in its current communications. One of the biggest legacies was the en-mass buying of backlinks and Google’s subsequent reaction via its so-called “Manual Action” penalty which has been the stuff of SEO nightmares.
SEO and Web Crawling
Search Engines find URLs (web page links) in web pages and other documents (XML sitemaps, PDF documents, word and other office documents, PDFs, and even browser address bars). There are many signals and hints – in fact over 200 – that Google uses to store, index, and rank web pages. We made a small list of things that people have said or written about SEO:
| SEO Signal and Hint | SEO Meaning |
| Domain Age | How long a domain has been registered, how long the current registration is, and how long its been indexed by Google |
| Backlink | Do follow backlinks help Google understand how important a web page is to others, in a sort of popularity contest. But the number of links, the weighting authority of the page linking to another and the relevance all play a role in how strong that signal is |
| PageRank | The original score of each page and domain on the web per the original “Google” patent filed by Larry Page and Sergei Brin while at the University of Stanford |
| Domain Authority | A term for ranking a domain between 0 and 100 developed by Moz (formally SEOMoz) |
| Image Optimization | Use of metadata and other techniques to rank images – very important for image libraries, stock image publishers, companies who sell products based on diagrams, e-commerce, political parties, hotels, and others |
| Authority | The authority a page has on a particular term |
| ARhef text | How and what a link says about its target |
| Video Optimization | Optimizing a video for Google and/or YouTube search |
| Schema | Schema provides rich data to Google – like flight arrivals and departures, movie timetables, recipes, distances, reviews etc |
