What is SEO?

The word SEO is an acronym from English that stands for Search Engine Optimization, and SEO is exactly that: optimising for search engines.

The aim of SEO is to gain traffic by ranking different words in the top positions of one or more specific search results.

Now let’s clear up the main questions.

What is a search engine?

A search engine is a tool that returns a series of results based on the query entered into it.

These search engines work with internal algorithms that try to offer the best answer to the query entered.

Let’s look at an example with one of the best-known search engines, and the one where most SEO work is done: Google.

If we search Google for «what is seo«, it will return hundreds of thousands of results, ranked by which ones best answer our search query.

In response to this query, it will return websites that match our search intent, but appearing for these queries and getting visits from them is not easy.

Achieving this takes SEO optimisation work, in which the pages Google considers most valuable will get the top positions. We will also need to find out how many searches the queries we want to appear for receive, so that we can capture that traffic.

Types of search engines

There are currently many search engines, the most notable being:

• Google
• Yandex
• Bing
• Baidu
• Yahoo
• Duckduckgo
• Ecosia

But social networks also have search engines or algorithms for ranking featured results, such as:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter

Some business directories and real estate or travel aggregators:

• Airbnb
• Booking
• Idealista
• Fotocasa
• Milanuncios

And finally, some video search engines, such as:

• Youtube
• Vimeo

There are many more, but this should give you an idea.

Each search engine is different and they have little in common, as they value different things, but this helps you get an idea.

Search queries

Search queries are usually called keywords.

They are the words users type into search engines to find what they need.

To do SEO, you need to find out which queries users make in these search engines and decide which kinds of queries we want to appear for, so that we capture traffic and achieve our goal.

To do this, we use various tools that help us look up different words and their estimated average monthly searches. Whenever we find keywords, we assign them to different pages on our website so that our content ranks in search engines for those keywords. This process is called Keyword Research.

For example, let’s say we have an online shop selling paint products. Depending on the word we want to rank for on Google, we will need to approach it one way or another.

• Paint. It has 74.000 average monthly searches. It is a short generic keyword, as it is made up of a single word. If I, as a user, search for that word on Google, I could be looking for anything related to it. Because it is a single word, it is hard to tell what the user searching for it needs. Ranking for it will be difficult, as we cannot clearly identify the user’s need and how to meet it.
• Buy paint for my house. It has 40 average monthly searches. It is a long-tail keyword made up of 4 words. The user’s search intent is clear: they want to buy paint to paint their house, so the intent is transactional. It has few searches, but because the search intent is so clear and it is a long-tail keyword, it will be much easier to rank for.
• How to paint my house.  It has 170 average monthly searches. It is a long-tail keyword made up of 4 words. The user wants to find information, so the intent is informational. They may intend to buy or hire painters after researching, depending on certain factors that will help them decide, such as the cost and the time the job could take.

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