Topic 4 - SEO 1 (Introduction)

Question 1

What is a search engine and how does it work?

Answer 1

A search engine is a program that searches for and identifies items based on keywords or characters that a user has entered.

How it works
1. A spider or bot ‘crawls’ the web to find new documents
2. search engine indexes the content into their database based on keywords
3. search engine ranks resulting document based on an algorithm set on multiple factors

Question 2

Describe the significance of keywords in SEO and how it changes in the consumer purchase stages

Answer 2

Keywords are a word or phrase that represents a searches intent It helps with these factors
- Rank search term with a certain page
- Helps you show up on SERP as most relevant result

Keywords differ at each stage of the consumer purchase process. The sales funnel is broken into 3 sections
1. Top
2. Middle
3. Bottom (Purchase)
and keywords will change from questions to direct search of brand or website.

Question 3

What is ‘intent’ in SEO marketing?

Answer 3

Intent is an action that search engines try and predict when an input is entered. There are 3 main types of intent
1. Navigational - Searching for the official website of an organisation
2. Informational - Searching for info where the user wants to learn more about teh subject matter
3. Transactional - Searching with the intention to get something.

Question 4

Describe semantic topics and its relation to keywords in SEO

Answer 4

Semantic topics are topics that are relevant and most likely to be searched on. (Example: AI)

Under every semantic topic is a list of keywords and adding these terms and phrases to pages gives them a better chance to be perceived by Google and searches as
- relevant
- comprehensive
high quality

Question 5

What are title tags and meta descriptions? What are some best practices to take note of?

Answer 5

Title tags and meta descriptions are the first things you see of a website on the SERP. They go hand in hand in providing basic info of the relevant searched item.

Some best practices for meta description include
- Aligning the title and description with target page
- Placing the target keyword and related topic keyword near beginning of decription
- Clear and easy to read
- Have a CTA
- DO NOT clickbait