First Principles of SEO

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Online marketing is a field that’s always changing with new trends and strategies. And search engine optimization is no exception.

In fact, if we’re not careful, we can waste countless hours chasing SEO trends, techniques, “best practices,” and algorithm updates.

But to develop the right SEO strategy, simple tips aren’t enough. You need to first understand the basics of SEO.

And by basics, I don’t mean just knowing what a title tag is, what the ranking factors are, or how to use a keyword on a page.

I mean building your knowledge from the ground up using first principles.

First principles? Don’t worry, that’s exactly what this post is about.

What exactly are First Principles?

First principles, also known as “basic principles” or “fundamental principles,” come from philosophy and science.

It’s a tool that helps you understand complicated problems by understanding the basics and facts that the problem is built on. You clearly separate assumptions from facts to see how an idea actually comes about.

So, we break down a problem into its smallest elements – the smallest divisible parts, like in mathematics. Or the smallest atom that can’t be divided further, as a chemist would understand it.

“I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by some other way—by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!”

— Richard Feynman

When you start with these basics, learning becomes much easier – because you’re not just memorizing; you’re building everything on understanding.

In the book “The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts” by Farnam Street, Shane describes this thinking model very well:

”It is a tool to help clarify complicated problems by separating the underlying ideas or facts from any assumptions based on them. What remain are the essentials. If you know the first principles of something, you can build the rest of your knowledge around them to produce something new.”

– Shane Parrish

How do we apply this thinking model to search engines? It’s simple, we focus on the first principles of SEO.

The First Principles of SEO

The first principles of SEO, on which I base my knowledge, are as follows:

  1. A search query is a specific demand for something.
  2. Google wants many people to use the search engine so that businesses will want to advertise on their platform.
  3. To rank, a page must be indexed.
  4. To be indexed, a page must be found first (crawling).
  5. The internet is huge, and crawling and indexing cost money and resources.
  6. To appear for a search query, a page must be relevant.
  7. A page can be relevant for different search queries.
  8. A search query can have different intentions (inform, buy, etc.).
  9. A page will rank highly if it matches the most common intention.
  10. Demands can change, and search intentions can change.

These are the principles in simple terms. Now, let’s dive a bit deeper, and I’ll explain what I mean.

1. A search query is a specific demand for something

Every time someone uses a search engine and types something in, they want to find something. That makes sense, right? Why else would you search?

With every search query (also called a keyword), we are dealing with a specific demand. This can be a demand for information, a specific product, or a brand. Sometimes people use search just to get somewhere (for example, when someone googles “Facebook” to go to the Facebook site).

It’s simply real people looking for something they need or want to know.

2. Google wants many people to use the search engine so that businesses will want to advertise on their platform.

Search engines make their money through advertising, just like a free newspaper does. After all, you don’t pay to use Google. For someone to want to advertise, enough people need to use the search engine regularly to make it worthwhile.

For users to keep coming back, they need to find what they’re looking for. That’s why the user is the focus – not the advertisers or websites.

3. To rank, a page must be indexed

If a page isn’t indexed, it simply won’t appear in search results. Indexing means that the page is read by the algorithm and assessed for which search queries it is relevant to (put simply).

Until this happens, it can’t rank.

4. To be indexed, a page must be found first (crawling).

This point is almost self-explanatory, right? Yet, not everyone understands it. If Google doesn’t know a page exists, it can’t appear in search results. So, before a page is indexed, the algorithm needs to know about its existence.

Every algorithm uses a tool called a crawler to find new pages. The crawler “crawls” from one page to another by following the links it finds.

This is why links are important, both internal and external. If you want to hide a page, make sure there isn’t a single link to it, not even internally, and especially not in the sitemap. That way, the crawler will never find it.

5. The internet is huge, and crawling and indexing cost money and resources.

Large data centres for storing information, huge computers running these algorithms, and so on. All of this costs money because nothing in life is free, including getting a page into the search engine.

This is an important principle to understand various measures like crawl budget, URL corpus, noindex, nofollow, etc.

Google isn’t out to get you if your page isn’t indexed; it’s just conserving resources and doesn’t see your page as a top priority at the moment. Why? That’s a whole other topic.

6. To appear for a search query, a page must be relevant.

It’s no longer about stuffing your page with the keyword multiple times. That’s definitely not enough. Behind every search term, there’s a reason why someone is searching. To appear for a search query, you need to be relevant for that query.

Your page will only show up for a keyword if you meet the reason for the search. Just writing “organic hair growth remedy” 100 times on your page won’t cut it.

We SEOs call this reason for searching the search intent.

7. A page can be relevant for different search queries.

Since different searchers don’t use the exact same words to look for the same thing, your page can be relevant for several different search queries. As long as your page addresses the problems of all these queries, it can rank for more than just one keyword.

8. A search query can have different intentions (inform, buy, etc.)

As mentioned earlier, there are various reasons why someone searches. Two people can search using the same term but expect entirely different results.

For example, one person might search “livestream” looking for an informational page on how to create a livestream, another might be looking for a service provider to organize a livestream, and a third might just want to watch today’s football game live.

They all enter the same term but would click on completely different pages.

9. A page will rank highly if it matches the most common intention.

So, if you answer the most common search intent from point 8, you will rank higher. If not, you might end up further down the list. For example, if 70% of searchers are looking for information, pages with that information will be ranked higher. The 30% who are looking for a product will scroll further down and click later.

10. Demands can change, and search intentions can change.

But above all, nothing is set in stone. The algorithm learns every day. We humans also evolve. Twenty years ago, a search for “smartphone” might have been “what the heck is that?” Today, you’re searching for the next smartphone to buy.

So, a top ranking today doesn’t guarantee a top ranking tomorrow.

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