How SEO works, in plain English
What search engines look at, why some pages rank and others don't, and the basics anyone can do to show up on Google.
What a search engine is trying to do
Google wants to show the most useful page for each search. To do that it does three things: it finds pages (crawling), it stores and understands them (indexing), and it orders them for each search (ranking). SEO is making each of those steps easy for your pages.
Step 1: be findable
Search engines find pages by following links and reading sitemaps. A page nothing links to may never be found. Submitting a sitemap in Google Search Console and linking your pages to each other solves most of this.
Step 2: be understandable
Each page should be about one clear topic, with a title and main heading that say so. Use the words your customers use, not internal terms. Fast loading and a page that works well on phones also matter, because most searches happen on phones.
Step 3: be the best answer
Ranking comes down to usefulness and trust. Useful means the page actually answers the question better than the alternatives. Trust comes from signs like other reputable sites linking to you, real reviews, and clear information about who you are.
Keywords, simply
A keyword is just what people type. Tools can show roughly how often a phrase is searched and how hard it is to rank for. New sites usually do better targeting specific phrases, like "bookkeeping for cafes", than broad ones like "accounting".
What to expect
SEO is slow. New pages often take weeks to months to settle. Be wary of anyone promising a guaranteed first place: nobody controls Google's results. Consistent, honest improvements are what work over time.
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