Introduction to SEO

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the practice of making your web content easier for search engines to find, understand, and rank. Unlike paid advertising, organic search traffic compounds over time — a well-optimised page can drive consistent visitors for years without ongoing spend.

How Search Engines Work (in brief)

Search engines run three continuous processes: crawling (discovering pages by following links), indexing (storing and analysing page content), and ranking (ordering results by relevance and quality). Good SEO makes each stage easier.

The Three Pillars of SEO

• Technical SEO: ensuring your site can be crawled and indexed — site speed, mobile-friendliness, structured data, clean URL structure, proper use of robots.txt and sitemaps
• On-page SEO: optimising the content and HTML of individual pages — titles, headings, meta descriptions, keyword relevance, internal linking
• Off-page SEO: building authority through backlinks and brand signals — earning links from reputable sites, mentions, and social sharing

Core On-Page Elements

<!-- 1. Title tag — most important on-page signal -->
<title>Primary Keyword — Secondary Keyword | Brand Name</title>

<!-- 2. Meta description — shown in search results (not a ranking factor, but affects CTR) -->
<meta name="description" content="One clear sentence describing the page value. 120–160 chars.">

<!-- 3. Canonical — prevents duplicate-content dilution -->
<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/definitive-url">

<!-- 4. H1 — one per page, contains primary keyword naturally -->
<h1>Complete Guide to Primary Keyword</h1>

URL Structure

Clean URLs are easier to read, share, and understand for both humans and crawlers.

Good:  /learn-react/useEffect-hook
Bad:   /page?id=4921&cat=3&ref=abc

Rules:
- Use hyphens, not underscores
- Lowercase only
- Keep them short and descriptive
- Include the main keyword
- Avoid stop words (a, the, of) when possible

E-E-A-T — What Google Actually Evaluates

Google's quality raters use E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) to evaluate content quality. This is especially important for YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) topics — health, finance, legal. Signal E-E-A-T by crediting authors, citing sources, keeping content updated, and earning links from established sites in your niche.

Core Web Vitals

Page experience is a ranking signal. Google measures three Vitals for all pages:

• LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) — < 2.5 s: how fast the main content loads
• INP (Interaction to Next Paint) — < 200 ms: responsiveness to user input
• CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) — < 0.1: visual stability

Quick-Win Checklist

• Every page has a unique <title> and meta description
• One <h1> per page containing the primary keyword
• Images have descriptive alt text
• Pages are mobile-friendly (responsive design)
• Site loads over HTTPS
• XML sitemap submitted to Google Search Console
• No orphan pages — every page is reachable via internal links