SEO: Search Engine Optimization Guide
This document is a comprehensive resource for SEO. From this guide you should literally be able to find all you need to know about search engine optimization.
All you need to know about SEO can be found from this page and the included links.
This page covers everything, from the very basics of internet search to the hyper-advanced.
What is Search engine optimization (SEO)?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of getting traffic to web pages. More specifically SEO is focused on increasing both quality and quantity of the traffic to your site.
Keep in mind that SEO does not include paid traffic. If you pay someone to get visitors to your site, that is not SEO. When you optimize for search traffic, you are dealing with the "natural" results from the search engines, and the traffic you will be getting is the "organic traffic".
Search Engines
There are many types of search engines, but in the context of SEO we are speaking of web search engines or internet search engines. They will allow users to carry out searches on the Internet. But even your grandma knows this.
Google is actually not the most popular search engine everywhere, but with a global market share of above 90 percent it is still the top player. Yandex is favored the most in Russia and a few other East Asian countries, while Baidu is the most prominent search engine in China.
These are the most relevant search engines:
- Google https://www.google.com
- Bing http://www.bing.com
- DuckDuckGo https://duckduckgo.com
- Yandex https://www.yandex.com
- Baidu http://www.baidu.com
- Ask http://www.ask.com
- Yippy http://yippy.com
- Yahoo https://www.yahoo.com
- Dogpile http://www.dogpile.com
- Archive https://archive.org
- Searx https://github.com/asciimoo/searx/wiki/Searx-instances
SEO Tools (Free)
Your number one SEO Tool is your keyboard. That's right. The most important factor in ranking for SEO is the stuff you type, your writing. Write great stuff. Create awesome content that people will be searching for. Make content that people will share, save, bookmark, print. Content that people love. Content that bring value. This is the fundamentals of all SEO.
It's easy to say: Write great content, and write content that people will share. But how? How do you write great content?
Two other powerful SEO tools:
- practice, and
- time
You will have to practice, and you must have time to practice. Spend time with your keyboard. Type. Practice.
Don't just practice offline. Do it live. Build a blog, a website, a community, write a newsletter. Publish. Not only will you become better at writing, you will also have the opportunity to build search rank, make money and learn from the real results and live data.
Another very important SEO tool is this one:
- inspiration and expanding your own knowledge by learning from others.
You can learn a lot from within, from yourself, by experimenting and analyzing your own data. But sometimes you can gain knowledge faster by looking at others. Achieve insight by observing the SEO experiences made by other people. Read SEO blogs, books and magazines. Learn from SEO masters but beware of scammers and fake "gurus". Cultivate understanding by looking at what the professionals are doing. Enlighten yourself by studying the most successful sites. Learn by looking at the best performing sites in your niche in the search engine results.
These are some other free SEO tools worth mentioning:
- Open Link Profiler https://openlinkprofiler.org/ (a free SEMrush alternastive)
- Keyword Tool http://keywordtool.io/
- Bing Webmaster http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster
- Moz https://moz.com/tools
- Moz link explorer https://moz.com/link-explorer
- Archive http://archive.org/web
- Devtools https://developer.chrome.com/devtools
- Seobook tools http://tools.seobook.com/
- Uersuggest https://neilpatel.com/ubersuggest/
Lists of more SEO Tools:
- Large list of SEO tools https://www.portent.com/blog/seo/insanely-large-list-seo-tools-useful-resources.htm
- SEO Tools: The Complete List https://backlinko.com/seo-tools
- Moz blog SEO tools https://moz.com/blog/100-free-seo-tools
SEO Tools (Paid)
- ahrefs https://ahrefs.com/
- SEMrush https://www.semrush.com/
- Majestic https://majestic.com/
Notable pages and sites for SEO
- Periodic Table of SEO http://searchengineland.com/seotable/download-periodic-table-of-seo
- What Every Programmer Should Know About SEO http://katemats.com/what-every-programmer-should-know-about-seo/
SEO News and Blogs
- SearchEngineWatch.com is probably the most popular SEO news site, and one worth reading.
- SearchEngineLand.com is another great SEO site to visit occasionally.
- MattCutts.com/blog/ contains a lot of free and practical SEO advice, worth reading.
Keyword Research
- http://keywordtool.io/
- https://www.google.com/trends/
- http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/
- https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner?forceLegacy=true
- https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/keyword-research
- http://www.wordtracker.com/
- http://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-us/bing-ads-intelligence
- http://spyonweb.com/
- http://www.tinysuggest.com/