The world of search engine optimization can be quite confusing to those who are first learning what it's all about. Anyone reading “SEO for dummies” can easily learn what Google and the other search engines want. The key takeaway is that you must follow the rules to get the best results.
Those who are seeking ways to game the system will do more harm than good. Shortcuts never deliver what people promise, and the best thing to do is always go the extra mile and make sure that you're creating pages that are what Google wants. If you create useful content, you've already done most of what Google wants, and the rest is only an afterthought.
SEO for Beginners
What Does SEO Stand For? Its Search Engine Optimization. The search engine most people optimize their content for is Google. However, DuckDuckGo is another search engine, and so is Bing. So many online marketers are concerned about Google because it sends the vast majority of traffic to their sites. If your site is properly optimized for Google, you'll receive traffic from the other search engines as well.
What does SEO mean?
What is SEO, and how it works? SEO means that you optimize every aspect of your website for the search engines. Your content, images, and coding must be optimized so they are easily accessible by search engines. Many people forget that for Google to index its content, it must be able to spider everything. (Google Spider Crawler is an app/algorithm search engine used to find and track web pages.)
Any pages that Google can't spider won't be included in their index. One of the first things that you must do is make sure that every piece of content on your page is accessible to spiders.
How to search for keywords on Chrome
The best way to search for keywords using Chrome or any browser is to type what you're looking for in Google. The first thing you do is enter a keyword or a phrase into Google and press enter. Pay attention to the keywords in the listings' titles, and you'll start to see a pattern.
Scroll down and see the People also ask area and also the Related searches. These two things are vital because they show you other keywords that people are searching for related to your term.
How do you search for keywords on a Mac?
The process for finding keywords using a Mac is the same as with Chrome. Google doesn't care if you're using a Windows or Mac computer. The type of computer you use or browser, for that matter, has no impact on Google's search results.
The only thing that matters is the location you're at since some search queries are dependant on where you are. For example, if you type in a sushi restaurant, you'll receive different results if you're in New York City or Paris.
A couple of tips and tricks
You should always follow the rules and do everything that Google says to do. There are a few ways to get ahead of the game and help yourself out a little bit. If you're willing to be a bit adventurous, it's possible to come out ahead, doing a few things.
Though, you want to be careful not to appear to be trying to do anything out of the ordinary. Google watches sites very closely, and if you venture too far off into the deep end, your website will suffer in the rankings. I suggest you look at our SEO Tips & Tricks category to find proven ways to increase rankings safely.
A common thing that online marketers like to do is to buy expired domains and take advantage of all the SEO benefits they have. What advantages does an expired domain have? An expired domain might have backlinks already pointed to it. If the domain had a site full of content, the pages might already rank for keywords. A website that people found useful in the past might still have links pointing to it.
The length of time the domain has been expired will play a role in whether it's indexed in Google. If you can catch a domain as it's dropping, you might be able to put the pages back up and traffic them. If you don't want to recover it, the 2nd technique is simply to use 301 redirects to your website to transfer DA (Domain Authority) to your main domain.
However, I have to warn you this is a questionable technique, and Google was clear about such practice – it is not recommended.
But if you like risks and adventures, I will share with you code for transferring Domain Authority. You need to find/create a .htaccess file in the root directory of the expired domain and add these lines:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*expired-domain.com.*$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://your-domain.com/ [R=301,L]
Now let's turn our attention to the business side of things.
What does SEO mean in business?
You may have wanted to learn SEO to improve your site or even offer search engine optimization to others. If you have a business site, SEO is a little different. Content sites such as blogs require a different approach than business sites to make them successful. Some SEO professionals find that a blog is much easier to rank than a business site with only a few pages. The process is similar to rank the pages, but it's always harder to rank sites with fewer pages. Remember, every page on your site is an opportunity to get traffic from Google.
SEO means the same thing in business as it does for content sites. The major difference is the type of pages that you're trying to rank in Google. A business site probably has far fewer pages, which means you've got to work extra hard to make sure that each of them ranks. How do you rank a site that has a limited amount of pages? You do so by building lots of high-quality backlinks to each of the pages. Backlinks are far more critical to a business site than a blog because of the higher competition. A blog has much less competition, so there's less need for backlinks than a business site.
How much do SEO freelancers make?
How much do SEO freelancers make is a common question.
According to research made by Ahrefs at 2018 salary level varies A LOT from country-to-country, but the maximum rate SEO spec freelancer may hope is $5000 a month, but in reality $501-$1,000 per month is the most popular. So I think we can reply to “what does SEO stand for?” also with the answer “money”. The calculation was taking from average pricing for monthly SEO service by freelancers.
Let's show the numbers:
Earnings per month
Monthly SEO freelancer pricing
As you see, $501-$1000 is the most popular salary, but the second biggest group is freelancers who earn only $251-$500.
How to earn more than average?
Monthly earning by the time in business
The interesting fact – More experienced SEOs charge significantly more than less experienced SEOs. It means you need to practice SEO for 2+ years to charge double the amount of a freelancer who is less than 2 years in business.
Seo Monthly Rates By Time In Business
Local versus Worldwide
And last but not least interesting fact – local market SEO spec charges significantly less than the same freelancer in the worldwide market. So don't be afraid to browse the internet and look for clients in the open ocean of the worldwide web, it would make your checks much bigger.
So, how much you make as an SEO freelancer depends on your experience and your ability to market your skills. If you're able to convince people to pay top dollar, the sky is the limit on how much you can earn. Nothing is stopping you from starting an SEO agency and working for yourself full-time. Don't worry so much about how much freelancers make and spend more time trying to improve your skills so you can earn as much as possible.
SEO freelancer salary versus salary in agency
As a bonus, here is the average salary at the SEO specialist position in the company ( agency) in 3 different areas – USA, Germany (EU), and India (Asia).
Rates in India
Seo Specialist Salaries In India
According to Google, it is 4,742 United States Dollars. Looks amazing for India, right?
The trick here is – it is an annual yearly salary. As you can see from the graph above, almost all jobs are at the 234k level, which is only $3125 a year, which is only $260 a month.
If you are in this position now, I would recommend working as a freelancer. Average freelancers double the amount you can get in an Indian agency.
Let's move to the next location – EU, Germany
So, if you start your morning routine by eating sausages with a cup of beer in hand, your Average base pay in the EU, Germany is €41941 a year or €3495 a month. Don't forget it is the euro, so after conversion, we get 4,056United States Dollars monthly salary.
Not bad. Very very, not bad. But not all of us were so lucky to born in Deutschland.
Let's move to one of the largest countries in the world – the United States.
So the salary rate for the USA is even bigger than in Germany. Decent money. Listen to my advice – be born in the United States.
Jokes apart, in reality, even considering so high base average SEO specialist salary in US or EU agencies, trying to freelance a little may work out better than you expected. It's especially true if you know some coding skills.
The thing is, there is a huge disparity in freelancer earnings per country. The average freelancer in the US earns much more than average freelancers from 3rd world countries (sorry, Indians).
What does SEO stand for in marketing?
There are many different things that SEO can stand for in marketing. SEO can mean Search Engine Optimization, or it could also mean buying ads. Google and other search engines allow you to purchase advertising on their site.
If you want to rank at the highest position for many keywords, you'll have to buy advertising. Google is trying to make as much money as possible, which is why they sell advertising. Google knows that the top spot in their search results is worth big bucks, and people are willing to shell out their hard-earned money for instant high listings.
What is SEO writing?
SEO writing (or “writing for SEO”) is the art of planning and creating, which is equally interesting to both people and Google search engine algorithms. SEO content writing is a valuable skill for copy-writer in SEO Marketplace because it helps webmasters rank their websites higher in google and get more targeted traffic and, finally, profit.
The content creator needs to learn special writing techniques, which include more passive voice, using the right density of focus and additional keywords, correct use of sub-heading, and many other factors. But learning SEO content writing is the best practice for writing an effective text ad too. Copywriter with such skills never would be jobless.
Are Google ads worth it?
The short answer to that question is yes; Google ads are worth it. Without many details, google something yourself and check how many ads you will see. Happily, I did it for you, so watch the screenshot below.
Paid Traffic Vs. Organic Traffic
I am sorry for my paint skills, believe me or not, but I am not a designer.
Back to the topic, this was a screenshot of the WHOLE screen on my laptop without scrolling. Basically, when I type in Google something, I see only this. Pretty much all screen of ads and tiny 2 words linked to the first organic result as a rich snippet. The anchor is cut to just 2 words, and the font is twice as smaller as the link to ads. Real top-ranking pages start to appear only after I scroll down. Look, not fair.
Here is fact #321 – the top 3 Google search results get 75.1% of all clicks to empower your urgent feel of inequality.
It's because only 3 results usually fit the screen, and for the 4th result, visitors need to scroll down.
What if the user doesn't know how to scroll or his mouse is broken?
modern times need modern solutions
(c) some meme.
Luckily, we have an Adblock now. Honestly, I don't know if it's because of Adblock's popularity or people nowadays became suspicious and do not click on ads, but we still get some old good free organic clicks.
If you don't have the money for Google ads, organic SEO is the next best traffic method. You create high-quality content on your site in hopes that it ranks high in Google. Going the organic route takes quite a bit of time, and you also need to create the content. If you have no money, then that's the only way you can do things. If you have a budget to work with, the Google ads are by far the best bang for your buck.
What can help you identify opportunities to improve your keywords and ads?
There are many tools that you can use to identify the keywords that your competition is bidding for. If you don't have access to those tools, the best thing you can do is enter the keywords yourself and see who is advertising. Enter the keywords several times and also click on the next pages to see more advertisers. Write down each keyword and who is advertising on them.
The main thing you want to do is steer clear of the keywords with a lot of traffic because those will be the ones that cost the most. You'll also find that keywords with a high traffic volume have much lower conversions than keywords with fewer searches. Allow businesses with deeper pockets to bid for the high volume keywords and burn through their budget.
Now let's turn our attention to negative keywords
What are the negative keywords? A negative keyword is a keyword that you don't want your ad to display for. If your keyword is “make money online eBook,” you might use “free make money online eBook” as a negative keyword. You wouldn't want your keyword to show up for a search result with the word free in it. It can be as narrow in your negative keywords as you want. You can set up words such as free to be a negative keyword or a phrase like listed above. Save money by not showing your ads and getting clicks for keywords that won't produce the results you're looking for.
Negative keywords can help advertisers better target their ads by
Reducing costs
Only showing your ads to people who intend on buying.
Increase your conversions
The real benefit of using negative keywords is that you control what happens with your ad. You get to narrow down the people who see your advertisement, which means you'll make more money. It will take a little time to zero in on the negative keywords you don't want your ads to show up for. You'll be able to tell through your conversions if things are going in the right direction. Tweaking along the way is a must, and you will find new negative keywords that need to be added to your list.
Which SEO marketing is best for your business? Free or paid ads?
There are many different factors to determine which is best for your business. Paid ads cut to the chase, and you don't need to wait the insanely long periods for Google and the other search engines to spider your pages. The downside to paid advertising is, well, it costs money. You can quickly lose your shirt if you're not careful when it comes to paid advertising. Always keep an eye on how much your spending and your conversion rates. Pull ads immediately if they're not converting and keep tweaking until they do.
Free advertising is the route many of you will go
Free isn't free in the sense that it doesn't cost anything. Organic SEO traffic requires both time and effort, and neither of those things is free. Time, in the end, is costly because you could be doing other things to earn money immediately. The highest return on your investment will always be with organic SEO Stand because of the low costs involved. You can create high-quality content inexpensively, and Google will send traffic to it.
No one is an SEO whiz overnight, and it will take you quite a bit of practice to get the process down pat. Once you learn how to get as much traffic as possible from Google, that's when the amazing stuff begins. The moment you know you have a firm grasp of SEO when you'll be able to scale up your business easily because it's only a matter of repeating what you're doing.
It's all about servicing the needs of your customers in the end
No matter how you obtain your customers, it's all about making sure their needs are met. If someone stumbles onto your site from an advertisement or search engine rankings, it doesn't matter. What does matter is how you treat them as customers, which is the most important thing to understand. Always bend over backward for your customers, and you'll see the results.
What does SEO stand for? SEO Stand means you should satisfy customers' needs, and you will be handsomely rewarded. The people who always make the most money are the ones who know how to drive traffic and convert them into customers. The process is repeatable, and that's why online marketing is an almost limitless opportunity for those who see it as such.
What Does SEO Stand For – FAQs
Sometimes you don't have time to read long articles—especially such as this one – almost an e-book.
So for the laziest SEO beginners, I add the most common or most important short questions – answers.
What is SEO, and how it works?
SEO Stand is Search Engine Optimization. It would be best if you had it to get good rankings in Google or other search engines and receive free traffic(visitors). It works when you follow Google guide-lance and my SEO basics for beginners.
What is SEO in simple words?
SEO Stand is a set of rules you have to follow to get your website a chance to be seen by other people and collect a loyal subscriber database.
What does SEO stand for in web design and development?
There is strict guideline a developer or web-designer need to follow to be ranked well in Google. That includes site structure, website loading speed, size of fonts, amount of words, and many other factors.
What is SEO in 2021?
SEO in 2021 is a bit more complicated, but base rules remain the same. Post quality content, which people would like to read and share. To get the initial amount of people to read and like your content, don't be afraid to introduce yourself on your niche websites & forum, use SEO Stand outreach, and other techniques.
Does SEO Still Work 2021?
Do you still use search engines like google? If yes, then SEO still works in 2021. SEO means Search Engine Optimization, and it always will be while Search Engine exists.
Is SEO important in 2021?
If you are the blog owner, other websites, social accounts, or even YouTube channels and plan to earn some money from it, then yes – SEO is important in 2021. It is important for freelancers because you have to know at least basic SEO to be competitive in the internet job marketplace.
Is SEO Dead 2021?
SEO is definitely not dead in 2021. Here is a list of reasons:
Google has received nearly 2.3 trillion searches this year.
Google's search algorithm uses more than 200 factors to rank websites, including domain age, website usability, page speed, grammar or spelling errors, and publishing frequency.
The forecast says SEO-related spending will be worth $80 billion by 2020
Will SEO exist in 5 years?
SEO would exist until we discover true Artificial Intelligence within the next 5 years. However expert says we can do not worry about it until 2060. Even with Elon Musk's pessimism about AI, we still have 5 years for SEO existing.
Probably closer to 2030 to 2040 imo. 2060 would be a linear extrapolation, but progress is exponential. https://t.co/e6gyOVcMZG
Yes, backlinks still play one of the most important roles in SEO 2021. We can say that SEO stands for backlinks. Pages with more backlinks get more traffic from Google than pages with less or without backlinks. In fact, almost all no-backlinks pages don't get ANY traffic from google.
“A site's overall link authority (as measured by Ahrefs Domain Rating) strongly correlates with higher search engine rankings.” – Backlinko. 28 April 2020
