Definition
SEO (search engine optimisation) is the work of helping a website appear in the unpaid results on Google and other search engines when people search for what you offer. It covers three areas: the content on your pages, the technical health of your site, and the trust other websites give you through links and mentions.
How it works
Google finds pages with automated programs called crawlers, which follow links and read sitemaps. Pages it can read and understand are stored in its index. When someone searches, Google's ranking systems pick the most useful pages from that index, looking at how well a page answers the query, how easy it is to use on a phone, and signals of trust such as links from respected sites. SEO work supports every step: making pages easy to crawl, writing content that matches what people actually search for, and earning genuine links and reviews. Unlike ads, you do not pay for each click, but results usually take a few months to build.
Example
Picture a tuition centre in Malleshwaram that gets most of its students through word of mouth. It publishes a page titled 'CBSE Class 10 Maths Tuition in Malleshwaram' with fees, batch timings, teacher profiles and answers to common parent questions, then links to it from its Google Business Profile. If the page reaches the first page of results for that search, each enquiry it brings costs nothing per click. Buying the same search as an ad might cost, say, ₹15 to ₹25 per click.
An illustration: the business and the rupee figures are made up to show how the idea works.
Common mistake
Writing for Google instead of for people. Repeating a phrase like 'best tuition near me' again and again is keyword stuffing, which Google's spam policies treat as spam. Another common mistake is expecting results within a week and then giving up. SEO pays off when you keep publishing useful pages and fixing problems for several months.
Where you learn it
- Module 1: Digital Marketing Foundations
- Class: Channels Overview: SEO, Social, Ads, Email, Content & Influencers · read it free
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