The three cornerstones of SEO: content, technology, and authority.
Modern SEO mainly revolves around three core aspects:
Content Quality (Creating Value for Users): This is the soul of SEO. Search engines aim to provide users with the most relevant and useful information. Therefore, your website content must accurately answer users' search intent, providing comprehensive, clear, and easy-to-understand information. Keyword research is fundamental; it helps you understand user needs and create content accordingly.
Technical Architecture (Paving the Way for Search Engines): This is the skeleton of SEO. Even the best content on a website won't rank well if search engines can't crawl and understand it effectively. This includes website loading speed, mobile device compatibility, secure links (HTTPS), a clear website structure (URL structure, internal links), and code that allows search engines to "read" the page content (such as structured data).
External factors (building reputation and authority): This can be seen as a website's "reputation" across the entire internet. The most important manifestation of this is backlinks—links from other high-quality websites to your site. This is equivalent to others casting a "vote of confidence" for you. The more links you have, and the higher their quality, the more authoritative search engines consider your website, and the more likely your ranking will improve.
The Right Mindset: For Users, Not Just Search Engines
Finally, and most importantly, the fundamental principle is that SEO's ultimate service target is the "user," not the "search engine." All optimization techniques should aim to improve user experience. Deliberately stuffing keywords and creating low-quality content to deceive search engines (commonly known as "black hat SEO") may be effective in the short term, but in the long run, it will inevitably be punished by the algorithm. Truly successful SEO is when you focus on solving user problems and providing an excellent experience; search engines will naturally reward you with higher rankings.
