What is SEO?

SEO = Search Engine Optimization

• SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.
• Its core is keyword optimization, site structure improvement, and enhancing user experience.
• The goal is to gain more organic search traffic and conversions.

Why do SEO?

Imagine posting a blog article or any content you want to promote on the web,
but when you search on Google or Naver, it doesn’t show up.
That content will never be discovered, and no one will ever know about it. 😢

But if you optimize for SEO, your ranking will gradually rise, and eventually your content will show up.
This applies to websites, apps, and any online service.

When I didn’t know about SEO…

Back in 2020, when I was learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, meta tags were not emphasized much.
At the time, I was just creating layouts quickly and uploading them via Dothome FTP for hosting. (I didn’t even use Flexbox; I used float for everything.)

Now I can handle frontend, backend, and deployment, but even then I was too focused on the technical side.
I thought, “This should work fine!” and deployed my code happily,
but I missed the crucial question: How do I actually make my website or app visible to people?

The moment I realized SEO’s importance

When I created a blog, platforms like HashNode allowed me to track traffic.
But when I checked the traffic on my self-made blog, no one was visiting.

Since I deployed my own blog on Linux with Docker, I could only see incoming IPs through logs.
This was too inconvenient, so I eventually turned to GA4.
Through Google Analytics, I learned that I also needed to register my domain on Google Search Console.

After setting up Search Console and GA4 to track visitors, the results were… miserable.
Traffic was basically zero. No one except me was reading my posts.

I wish I had done it from the beginning

This doesn’t apply only to blogs.
Even when creating a simple landing page for a client, or running an app as a service, SEO matters.

Back then I used the latest frameworks, attached a server (with just two APIs), and deployed the site.
I worried about performance, applied a CDN, and even considered caching.

But if no one clicks on the end product, all that effort risks being forgotten.
Of course, if it’s just for a portfolio and well-documented, that’s fine.
But from a business perspective, experience running a site with actual traffic carries more weight.

Now, just building a website isn’t enough.
SEO optimization is essential to get noticed by search engines.

For example, without setting meta tags (especially Open Graph or Twitter Card tags),
sharing your link on KakaoTalk will only send a plain link with no preview card image.

You also need to insert the GA4 script for Google Analytics,
and optimize keywords while writing meta descriptions.

If I had studied SEO and marketing together from the start, it would have been so much better.
Not only could I have run my personal projects more competitively,
I might have been able to help others with their SEO optimization as well.

So, did applying SEO actually make a difference?

Once I started paying attention to SEO and even using Google Keyword Planner, traffic really did increase.
I didn’t touch the site after applying SEO improvements, yet within a month of publishing, traffic surpassed 100.
(For comparison, my older blog, after more than 6 months, only got around 30 monthly visitors.)

It’s still not fully public, but I’m currently testing SEO on specific web pages.
Once I gather enough meaningful data, I plan to publish another post about it.

The future of SEO

These days, there are many articles saying SEO is losing relevance.
That’s because people now ask ChatGPT or other AI directly, instead of searching on Google or Naver.
This new trend is sometimes called AIO (AI Optimization).

In my view, well-optimized SEO content will still rank higher,
and higher-ranked content will also be prioritized by AI when scraping the web.

So, what’s even more important than SEO itself is valuable content.
High-quality information will almost certainly be used by AI in some form.

And SEO trends change rapidly.
Well, what doesn’t change quickly these days?

Although this article is about SEO, in reality everything is evolving fast.
That’s why we need to keep learning and applying new strategies.