How does SEO work?

A beginners guide to Search Engine Optimisation, and the reasons why keywords and a unique voice is so important.

The search engine crawls the internet, searching for keywords from your enquiry. “How do you make banana bread”? Keywords: ‘banana bread’. The ‘how’ query will also help the search engine to find tutorials and bring these up in the search results, rather than just a description of what banana bread is. Notice how basic, and natural, the language is.
…or uses content already stored from it's 'library' (server). If you are new to the server, the search engine will index your pages. It finds it much easier to index your pages if there is a well-structuredsite-map; Squarespace has it’s own CMS (content Management System) that builds this for you. This can be linked directly to your search console, and from here, we can ask the search engine to index you! Giving the process a little nudge.
The better written your content and copy is (the more NATURAL more MEANINGFUL more UNIQUE and with well-positioned KEYWORDS), the higher the ranking you will get. The search engine will not notice you if your content is copied, unoriginal or sounds unnatural/not human (AI generated, anyone?).
You are now known to the Search Engine, you are gaining more visits, your content is getting attention, your growth has become organic!

Why did I need to know this?

Because you, as the content creator, can use On-page Optimisation to get your site seen by more people…

Write keywords into your title and descriptions (for ALL content, text, images, video), in well-positioned ways
Keep your language natural and human
use your search console to ask the search engine to re-index your pages whenever you have made changes or improvements.