What SEO Is Not

What SEO Is Not: The Truth Nobody Tells You About SEO

Listen, SEO is not the Yoast plugin, AIOS, or Rankmath.

SEO is not when the Yoast or Rankmath plugin turns green. That’s not SEO.

Image screenshot of Rankmath content optimizer guideline | This is not SEO

This is why, even when the button turns green, your post still doesn’t get any organic search traffic.

This is not to discredit those who write blog posts. But in my 10 years of writing experience online, the majority of those who say they are SEO writers know nothing about SEO beyond knowing what a keyword is and ensuring that the Rankmath and Yoast plugins turn green.

In many cases, all they know is that SEO involves using the keyword a certain number of times in a blog post. That’s not SEO at all.

In fact, Google’s system has grown beyond the dark ages of keyword stuffing and using the keyword a specific number of times.

Image screenshot of Rankmath content optimizer guideline taken from www.scholarshipstoday.com.ng | This is not SEO — *Image* *screenshot of Rankmath content optimizer guideline taken from www.scholarshipstoday.com.ng | This is not SEO*

What exactly is SEO?

One of the simplest definitions I’ve given over time is this:

“SEO is knowing what the searchers (users) are looking for and how they are looking for it.”

Google displays results in SERPs based on its understanding of the user. That’s why two different people can search for the same thing and get two different results.

For instance, if user ABC searches for “Making Money Online,” Google’s algorithm will first check the person’s past searches, the websites the person has visited, the YouTube videos they’ve watched, etc., before showing the person the results for the search.

Google’s algorithm will do the same thing for user XYZ.

The different things they have been searching for in the past contribute to the types of information they will find.

This is why, in SEO content writing, when you know what users are searching for (“keywords”), you must also understand HOW they are searching for it (LSI), WHY they are searching for it (Intent), and even WHEN (evergreen or seasonal).

That’s SEO.

Then you wrap it round your content like a baddie!

PS: It’s not hard. On-page SEO is very easy. You can learn SEO in one day, but expertise comes with practice. The difficult part is technical SEO, where you have to understand how code works, like JavaScript, PHP, etc., depending on the site structure.