SEO: What Is It?

Studying is no longer just about retaining information. It’s also about staying safe online. There are new laws being implemented to keep children safe on the internet. However, the first lines of defence should always be your own precautions.

There can be a lot of anxiety around using the internet for looking up information today. AI has further muddied the waters. How do we know everything we’re viewing is trustworthy? To help you feel safe online during your studying, an understanding of search engine optimisation (SEO) can be useful. So, without further ado, here’s a brief introduction to SEO.

A Quick Definition

SEO is a guiding set of principles outlining how content creators and marketers can optimise their content for search engines. It’s a literal term. The more content creators utilise SEO, the higher their sites will rank on a search engine like Google, Bing, and a plethora of lesser-known variations. ‘Rank’ is the operative word there.

SEO is also a form of quality assurance – an endorsement from search engine overlords that the content you’re about to view matches your search query and won’t harm your or your computer. If you feel comfortable clicking the first few links in a search engine results page, SEO has done its job. SEO isn’t about who is shouting the loudest. It’s anti-clickbait. The informed voice of David Attenborough in a sea of Logan Pauls.

How Does SEO Work?

There’s a lot of voices out there. From an outsider’s perspective, the sheer volume of content might seem impossible to filter. However, businesses (including those you study with) will typically hire expert SEO specialists and content writers to map all things SEO. Their roles will involve basic duties like:
Tracking changes to search engine algorithms to better understand how poor content is defined and flagged by search engines; for example, Google’s algorithm was tweaked to combat a rise in slop produced by ChatGPT. Monitoring the trends around keywords to better produce content web users want to engage with. Keywords must be integrated into text naturally, and not be deemed spam.

Studying analytics for the content that peers and competitors produce. Which site has the highest visibility, and how did they achieve it? Categorising and tagging their content appropriately, and not misleading readers. Taking all the information learned and producing high-quality content.

SEO is an ever-evolving field – one requiring specialist oversight to keep track of each change. Now AI is on the scene, one can probably expect faster algorithmic tweaks and changes to occur in future too. Websites can be penalised for producing content that is unoriginal, unnatural, repetitive, or badly written. Every site you see at the top of a results page shouldn’t have content that suffers from these problems.

Why Should You Care?

If you’re a homeschool student, you may think that SEO is only for adult marketing professionals. However, this information certainly pertains to you. Understanding SEO means you can put more trust in some types of content you see online. That while there’s a breathtaking amount of misinformation on the web, there are pockets of cyberspace where you can generally feel at ease. We hope that helps!

If you aspire to create your own business one day, knowing all about SEO will be essential too. Many successful entrepreneurs make a go of things in their teens, so understanding how to be seen as reputable online can give you a head start.

Conclusion

This quick overview of SEO should help you better understand how web content is produced, published and assessed for quality. Despite much of the conjecture out there today, there are still areas of the internet you can trust – those with great SEO!