Being an Internet user, you must have heard the term ‘SEO’ millions of times. If you are a writer or a content creator, you must know the significance of this term. To stand out on the Internet, you have to optimize everything you upload following some specific regulations to rank on Google.

So, Optimizing the content you upload over the Internet to be prominent and visible when people search for something is called SEO – Search Engine Optimization. As the term itself depicts, it is the optimization done based on the factors that Search Engines use to list out the web pages and web contents. When you apply SEO to your site or content, the search engine finds it easy to understand the kind of content you have uploaded and lists it out in the top results. As an output, your website/content shows up whenever someone searches for something related to your content.

Significance of SEO:

Search Engine Optimization is the primary factor behind the success of various online businesses and content creators. SEO is crucial to appear in Organic Search Results. By SEO optimizing your content, you can make your website or content appear on the Search Engine Result Page (SERP) whenever the user searches for something related to your content. The organic Search refers to the event when an actual and random user searches for something on the Internet. Appearing on the SERP based on the Organic Search is the best and makes your website trustable by the Search Engine, increasing the chances of more traffic on your channel. Here are other benefits of it:

• More chances of getting clicked by the users
• Improved user experience and usability
• Increased user trust
• More chances of social promotion of your content or website
• Increased chances of standing out from the competition

Types of SEO

Now that you know how important SEO is, it would be convenient for you to learn about the various kinds of SEO before going through the rest of the article. People classify SEO into various categories, however there are mainly 3 types of SEO. The following are the three types of SEO:

• On-page SEO - Optimization on web pages to improve rankings
• Off-page SEO - Optimization done outside of the website to rank better
• Technical SEO - Optimizations to improve search engine crawling and indexing

For better understand, have a look at the image below.

On-Page vs. Off-Page SEO

Factors that Effect SEO:

Here are the factors that you have to look after to appear on the top results on a SERP:

• Website security and speed
• Mobile-friendliness
• Better user experience
• Interesting and related content
• Internal and external links
• Domain age
• Social signals
• Originality
• High quality and optimized content
• Crawlability

The Popularity of SEO:

To know the popularity of SEO, we will first look at some statistics:

• According to SmartInsights.com, 58% of consumers purchase or avail service online every week.
• As of January 2022, Google processes over 1.2 trillion searches per year.
• Google, the most used Search Engine worldwide, holds 86.19% market share of desktop searches.
• 1.7 billion websites are live on the Internet

In the presence of this vast number of websites already present on the Internet, it is really difficult for any business or website to be visible. For this reason, almost the entire online industry is based on SEO. All the companies working online or offline have to hire SEO professionals to make themselves prominent in the competitions and win the business.

Top SEO Tools:

Keeping the need for SEO in mind, the web developers and content creators use different SEO tools to ensure the search engine friendliness of the content or website. Here are the top SEO tools used worldwide:

• Ahrefs: SEO Keywords tool
• Semrush: SEO Keywords tool
• Ubersuggest: Keyword Tracking tool
• Google Trends: SEO Checker tool
• Keyword Tool: SEO Keywords tool
• Mangools/KWFinder: SEO Keywords tool
• Answer the Public: Free SEO Tool

SEO Career Paths:

After learning SEO and developing knowledge regarding all the factors affecting it, you can work in any of the following job positions:

• SEO Specialist
• SEO Analyst
• Content Marketing Manager
• Pay-per-Click Manager
• Digital Marketer
• Marketing Analyst

SEO Job Market and Salaries:

Focusing on the SEO job market, 31,139 remote and onsite SEO jobs are available on indeed.com worldwide. On LinkedIn.com, there are over 31,000 SEO jobs in the United States alone, and on Ziprecruiter.com, 45,363 SEO jobs are currently posted. Whereas in the freelance market, the position is more or less the same. Here are some stats for you:

• Fiverr - 66,891 jobs
• Upwork - 13,249 jobs
• Freelancer - 214 jobs
• Guru.com - 112 jobs
• PeoplePerHour - 46 jobs

You can easily determine the demand for SEO experts in the job market from the above stats. However, the salary paid to SEO experts is as competitive as the field itself.

An SEO professional in the US is paid $60,548/year. The wages may vary based on your location and experience, but this is the average salary of SEO experts worldwide. Here is the breakdown of the salaries based on the job positions:

• SEO Specialist: $66,696/year
• SEO Analyst: $73,190/year
• Content Marketing Manager: $76,133/year
• Pay-Per-Click Manager: $99,071/year
• Digital Marketer: $101,542/year
• Marketing Analyst: $71,675/year

SEO Learning Path:

Now that you are aware of the demand and salary of SEO specialists, you may be considering beginning a career in this field. But wait! You cannot get directly into the market and get a highly paid job without knowledge or experience. To learn SEO, you can avail yourself of hundreds of resources, such as books, articles, and blogs. The best way to learn it and some practical and under the supervision of experienced instructors is by taking an online course. So, this article mentions the 5 best SEO courses offered by top online SEO training institutions. Let’s have a detailed look at each course: