As mentioned in the Content is King section, you want to write content that your audience will find valuable and engaging. Aside from the topical nature of the content, the way you format your webpages can have an impact on how the search engine bots digest your content. Every webpage you create should have a thought-provoking headline to grab the reader‟s attention, and should also include the keyword or phrase that the webpage covers. Other body formatting, such as bolding certain keywords or phrases, can help stress the importance of phrases you are optimizing for. 

Search engine optimized content, is one of the most important factors in determining who finds your website and what information they take away after they have landed there.

When developing an SEO strategy, it is best to split your initiatives into two buckets: on-page SEO and off-page SEO. On-page SEO covers everything you can control on each specific webpage and across your website to make it easyfor the search engines to find, index, and understand the topical nature of your content. Off-page SEO covers all aspects of SEO that happen off your website to garner quality inbound links.

When developing an SEO strategy, it is best to split your initiatives into two buckets: on-page SEO and off-page SEO.

1. On-page SEO covers everything you can control on each specific webpage and across your website to make it easy for the search engines to find, index, and understand the topical nature of your content.
2. Off-page SEO covers all aspects of SEO that happen off your website to garner quality inbound links. Let’s dive into on-page SEO first, and then we’ll tackle off-page SEO in the next section.

There are multiple elements on your website that you can control to make it easy for the search engines to index your content and understand what it is all about.
Website Content

As mentioned you want to write content that your audience will find valuable and engaging. Aside from the topical nature of the content, the way you format your webpages can have an impact on how the search engine bots digest your content. Every webpage you create should have a thought-provoking headline to grab the reader‟s attention, and should also include the keyword or phrase that the webpage covers. Other body formatting, such as bolding certain keywords or phrases, can help stress the importance of phrases you are optimizing for.

URL Structure
The actual structure of your website URL can have an impact on the search engines‟ ability to index and understand your website‟s content. Opting for a more organized URL structure will have the greatest impact. Some website creation software will insert arbitrary numbers and code in the URL. Although this may be optimal for the software, it serves no other purpose. If you can edit the URL to include the title of your webpage, you should do so. In fact, some website creation software, like HubSpot, will automatically create URLs based off of your webpage content in order to eliminate this issue.

Pictures
There is nothing worse than landing on a webpage and being faced with mountains of text. Not only are pictures a great way to break up sections of text, but they also serve as an opportunity to communicate with the search engines. Because search engines cannot tell what a picture is by scanning it, they look for clues in two places.

Every picture you upload to your website will have a file name. When the picture is inserted on your website, the picture‟s file name actually lives in your website‟s sources code, or HTML. Since the search engines scan your website‟s code, you should use file names that describe the picture. For example, „red-tennis-shoes-velcro.jpg‟ is much more useful than „pic12345.jpg‟.

Additionally, you can give the search engines an extra hand by including alt tags on all pictures on your website. Alt tags are short snippets of code that allow you to tag each photo on your site with a short text blurb.

Title Tags & Meta Tags
Besides an actual text headline on your page, every webpage you create has a title tag. This is the text snippet that appears in the upper left corner or on the tabs of your web browser. Also, the title tag is the blue link that the search engines show when they list your webpage on the SERP. Title tags max out at 75 characters, so choose your words wisely.

Meta tags are snippets of code you can include within your webpage‟s HTML. The meta tags are usually located near the title tag code in the head of your HTML.

There are two meta tags – meta description and meta keywords.

The meta description is a text snippet that describes what your specific webpage is about. Meta descriptions are usually the first place a search engine will look to find text to put under your blue link when they list your website on the SERP. If you do not have a meta description, the search engines will usually select a random piece of content from the page they are linking to. The meta description is limited to 150 characters.

Meta keywords consists of an additional text snippet in the HTML that allows you to list a few different keywords that relate to your webpage. Back in the day, search engines used this field to determine what keywords to rank your webpage for. Now, most search engines claim they do not even use meta keywords when indexing content. Some small or niche search engines may still use it though. As a best practice, it is recommended to put 5-7 keywords in the meta keywords, but don‟t spend too much time thinking about it.

Headline Tags
When the search engine bots scan your webpages, they look for clues to determine exactly what your webpage is about. Keywords that are treated differently than most others on the page show the search engines that they are more important than other keywords on the page. This is why the use of headline tags within your page is so important. By using various headline tags (each tag will produce a different size headline), you not only make your webpage easier to digest from a reader‟s standpoint, but you will also give the search engines definitive clues as to what is important on the page.

Internal Linking
Up until this point we have only referenced inbound links, or those links coming to you website from other websites. When creating content for your website on your blog or on specific webpages, you may want to reference other pages on your website. You can reference these other pages by inserting a link to another webpage within a specific webpage‟s content. The use of anchor text is recommended when linking to another webpage or even another website. When anchor text is used, it implies that the page you are linking to is about the keyword or phrase you use as your anchor.

We‟ve all heard it - when it comes to SEO, content is king. Without rich content, you will find it difficult to rank for specific keywords and drive traffic to your website. Additionally, if your content does not provide value or engage users, you will be far less likely to drive leads and customers.

It is impossible to predict how people will search for content and exactly what keywords they are going to use. The only way to combat this is to generate content and lots of it. The more content and webpages you publish, the more chances you have at ranking on the search engines. Lottery tickets are a good analogy here. The more lottery tickets you have, the higher the odds are that you will win. Imagine that every webpage you create is a lottery ticket. The more webpages you have, the higher your chances are of ranking in the search engines.

As you already know, the search engines are smart. If you create multiple webpages about the same exact topic, you are wasting your time. You need to create lots of content that covers lots of topics. There are multiple ways you can use content to expand your online presence and increase your chances of ranking without being repetitive. Here are few examples:

While conducting SEO research, you may come across articles that discuss being mindful of keyword density (how often you mention a keyword on a page). Although following an approach like this may seem technically sound, it is not recommended. 

Remember: do not write content for the search engines. Write content for your audience and everything else will follow. Make sure each webpage has a clear objective and remains focused on one topic, and you will do just fine.

In order to get your website‟s content to rank on the search engines, you need to take the path of least resistance. Although trying to rank for highly trafficked keywords and terms may seem like a logical approach, it will most likely lead to a lot of frustration and wasted resources. Also, even if you end up getting traffic from these types of keywords, chances are the quality of the traffic will be low due to disinterest in what you specifically have toThink of every search query as being like a snow flake - they are all different. There are billions more unique search queries than there are generic ones. In fact, if you were to add up all search engine traffic that comes from the most popular keywords, it would not even come close to the amount of traffic that comes from searches using those more unique queries. This is called the theory of the long tail.

A critical component of SEO is choosing the right keywords for optimization. If you sell shoes, you may want your website to rank for “shoe store,” (a head term), but chances are you are going to have some trouble there. However, if you optimize multiple pages on your website for each specific pair of shoes that you sell, you are going to have much more success and it will be easier to rank on the SERP. A keyword like “red tennis shoes with Velcro” (a long-tail keyword or term) is a good example. Sure, the number of people that search for this keyword will be much lower than the number that search for “shoe store,” but you can almost bet that those searchers are much farther down the sales funnel and may be ready to buy.

This is why long-tail keywords are so effective. They target people who are looking to perform a specific action, like buy something, or looking for a specific piece of information, like a how-to or a service that can solve their problem. By choosing to optimize with long-tail keywords, you will find it easier to rank on the search engines, drive qualified traffic, and turn that traffic into leads and customers.

It is not difficult to get your website to index and even rank on the search engines. However, getting your website to rank for specific keywords can be tricky. There are essentially 3 elements that a search engine considers when determining where to list a website on the SERP: 

• Rank, 
• Authority, 
• And relevance.

Rank

Rank is the position that your website physically falls in on the SERP when a specific search query is entered. If you are the first website in the organic section of the SERP (don‟t be confused by the paid ads at the very top), then your rank is 1. If your website is in the second position, your rank is 2, and so on. As discussed previously in How Search Engines Work, your rank is an indicator of how relevant and authoritative your website is in the eyes of the search engine, as it relates to the search query entered.

Tracking how your website ranks for a specific keyword over time is a good way to determine if your SEO techniques are having an impact. However, since there are so many other factors beyond your control when it comes to ranking, do not obsess over it. If your website jumps 1-5 spots from time to time, that‟s to be expected. It‟s when you jump 10, 20, 30 spots up in the rankings that it makes sense to pat yourself on the back.

Authority

As previously discussed in the How Search Engines Work section, search engines determine how authoritative and credible a website‟s content is by calculating how many inbound links (links from other websites) it has. However, the number of inbound links does not necessarily correlate with higher rankings. The search engines also look at how authoritative the websites that link to you are, what anchor text is used to link to your website, and other factors such as the age of your domain.

You can track over time how authoritative your website is by monitoring a few different metrics. There are a variety of tools to help you keep track. HubSpot offers a free tool called Website Grader that will show you how many domains are linking to your website, and also provide your website‟s Moz rank. MozRank is SEOmoz's general, logarithmically scaled 10-point measure of global link authority or popularity. It is very similar in purpose to the measures of link importance used by the search engines (e.g., Google's PageRank).

Relevance

Relevance is a one of the most critical factors of SEO. The search engines are not only looking to see that you are using certain keywords, but they are also looking for clues to determine how relevant your content is to a specific search query. Besides actual text on your webpages, the search engines will review your website‟s structure, use of keywords in your URLs, page formatting, and what keywords are in the headline of the webpage versus those in the body text.

While there is no way to track how relevant your website is, there are some SEO basics you can practice to cover your bases and make sure you are giving the search engines every possible opportunity to consider your website. We‟ll get to that in just a bit.

Search engines are extremely complex. Bottom line: the search engines are trying to think like human beings. It is very easy to get caught up in modifying your website‟s content just so you rank on the search engines. When in doubt, always err on the side of providing relevant and coherent content that your website‟s audience can digest. If you find yourself doing something solely for the search engines, you should take a moment to ask yourself why.

How search engines work

Search engines have one objective – to provide you with the most relevant results possible in relation to your search query. If the search engine is successful in providing you with information that meets your needs, then you are a happy searcher. And happy searchers are more likely to come back to the same search engine time and time again because they are getting the results they need.

In order for a search engine to be able to display results when a user types in a query, they need to have an archive of available information to choose from. Every search engine has proprietary methods for gathering and prioritizing website content. Regardless of the specific tactics or methods used, this process is called indexing. Search engines actually attempt to scan the entire online universe and index all the information so they can show it to you when you enter a search query.

How do they do it? Every search engine has what are referred to as bots, or crawlers, that constantly scan the web, indexing websites for content and following links on each webpage to other webpages. If your website has not been indexed, it is impossible for your website to appear in the search results. Unless you are running a shady online business or trying to cheat your way to the top of the search engine results page (SERP), chances are your website has already been indexed.

So, big search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo are constantly indexing hundreds of millions, if not billions, of webpages. How do they know what to show on the SERP when you enter a search query? The search engines consider two main areas when determining what your website is about and how to prioritize it.

1. Content on your website: When indexing pages, the search engine bots scan each page of your website, looking for clues about what topics your website covers and scanning your website‟s back-end code for certain tags, descriptions, and instructions.
2. Who’s linking to you: As the search engine bots scan webpages for indexing, they also look for links from other websites. The more inbound links a website has, the more influence or authority it has. Essentially, every inbound link counts as a vote for that website‟s content. Also, eachinbound link holds different weight. For instance, a link from a highly authoritative website like The New York Times (nytimes.com) will give a website a bigger boost than a link from a small blog site. This boost is sometimes referred to as link juice.

When a search query is entered, the search engine looks in its index for the most relevant information and displays the results on the SERP. The results are then listed in order of most relevant and authoritative.

If you conduct the same search on different search engines, chances are you will see different results on the SERP. This is because each search engine uses a proprietary algorithm that considers multiple factors in order to determine what results to show in the SERP when a search query is entered.

This Statistics was taken from

A few factors that a search engine algorithm may consider when deciding what information to show in the SERP include:

• Geographic location of the searcher
• Historical performance of a listing (clicks, bounce rates, etc.)
• Link quality (reciprocal vs. one-way)
• Webpage content (keywords, tags, pictures)
• Back end code or HTML of webpage
• Link type (social media sharing, link from media outlet, blog, etc.)

With a 200B market capiii, Google dominates the search engine market. Google became the leader by fundamentally revolutionizing the way search engines work and giving searchers better results with their advanced algorithm. With 64% market share, according to Compete, Inc., Google is still viewed as the primary innovator and master in the space.

Before the days of Google (circa 1997), search engines relied solely on indexing web page content and considering factors like keyword density in order to determine what results to put at the top of the SERP. This approach gave way to what are referred to as black-hat SEO tactics, as website engineers began intentionally stuffing their webpages with keywords so they would rank at the top of the search engines, even if their webpages were completely irrelevant to the search result.

Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to techniques that help your website rank higher in organic (or “natural”) search results, thus making your website more visible to people who are looking for your product or service via search engines. SEO is part of the broader topic of Search Engine Marketing (SEM), a term used to describe all marketing strategies for search. SEM entails both organic and paid search. With paid search, you can pay to list your website on a search engine so that your website shows up when someone types in a specific keyword or phrase. Organic and paid listings both appear on the search engine, but they are displayed in different locations on the page.

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a lightweight XML format designed for sharing headlines and other Web content. Think of it as a distributable "What's New" for your site. Originated by UserLand in 1997 and subsequently used by Netscape to fill channels for Netcenter, RSS has evolved into a popular means of sharing content between sites (including the BBC, CNET, CNN, Disney, Forbes, Wired, Slashdot, ZDNet,and more). RSS solves myriad problems webmasters commonly face, such as increasing traffic,and gathering and distributing news. RSS can also be the basis for additional content distribution services.

RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, including major news sites like Wired, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs. But it's not just for news. Pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS: the "recent changes" page of a wiki, a changelog of CVS checkins, even the revision history of a book.

Once information about each item is in RSS format, an RSS-aware program can check the feed for changes and react to the changes in an appropriate way. RSS-aware programs called news aggregators are popular in the weblogging community. Many weblogs make content available in RSS. A news aggregator can help you keep up with all your favorite weblogs by checking their RSS feeds and displaying new items from each of them.