Yoast SEO for WordPress training – Lesson 1.1 

Holistic SEO 
 

Table of contents 
Learning objectives 

1. Different search engines 

2. How do search engines work? 

Advanced: RankBrain 

Advanced: Important Google updates 

3. What is SEO 

4. What is holistic SEO? 

Example: What might an SEO beginner do? 

5. Don’t use any tricks 

Key takeaways 
 

Learning objectives 
In this lesson, you’ll learn:  
● about a few influential search engines; 
● how search engines find your site and determines its ranking on the 
search results page; 
● about the most important Google updates and their implications; 
● what different search results might look like on Google’s search 
engine results platform. 
● what the terms ‘SEO’ and ‘holistic SEO’ mean; 
● which actions you should focus on to create a sustainable site that 
search engines will like; 
● what short-term tricks you shouldn’t use for ‘SEO’. 
 
 

1. Different search engines  

There’s a world of search engines at people’s disposal by a mouse click. Let’s 
take a look at some different options. The most popular search engine is 
Google​, which has a reported market share of 90% globally. That means that 
it’s undeniably the most popular search engine at this point. But, what else is 

 
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there? Well, what about ​Bing​? It’s the second largest search engine in North 
America. About 6% of people in the US use Bing as their main search engine. 
Also, 4% of US searchers use ​Yahoo​. This means that it’s worth researching 
what search engine your target audience uses if you live in the States.  
 
But, there’s more. There are regions where other search engines are more 
dominant. In Russia, for example, Y
​ andex​ leads the pack with 45% of 
Russian market share. Also, the market leader in China is B
​ aidu​, which 
accounts for 65% of the market share over there. There’s also 
privacy-oriented search engines, such as ​Duckduckgo​ and S
​ tartpage​. They 
hold less than 1% of market share. Yet, some people will only use these 
because of their views on personal data. So it’s good to know that they exist.  
Lastly, we’d like to mention to Ecosia. This search engine spends their profits 
planting trees​ to benefit the environment and local economy. Last time we 
checked, they’ve helped plant over 77 million trees. Isn’t that awesome? 
 
Of course, stats change over time. Unsure about the current user numbers? 
Use ​StatCounter​ to check today’s situation.  
 
In our courses, we focus on G
​ oogle​ because it’s the largest, the most 
well-known, and it has the most users globally. At Yoast, when we think of 
Google, we think of its mission, which is: 
 
“to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible 
and useful.” 
 
Google’s mission gives us information about what they think is important. 
But how exactly do search engines work?  
 
 

2. How do search engines work?  

Search engines follow l​ inks​. Links connect pages and documents to each 
other, much like roads connect villages and cities. By following these links, 
search engines collect data to show to their users. But how do they do it? 
 
A search engine like Google consists of:  
 
1. crawlers 
2. an index 
3. an algorithm 

 
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We’ll explore these terms in further detail below.  
 

Crawlers, spiders, or bots 

A ​crawler​ follows the links on the web. A crawler is also called a robot, bot, 
or spider. It goes around the internet 24/7. You can think of a crawler as a 
little, curious explorer. It collects content such as text, images, videos, news 
items and anything that’ll be interesting for a search engine to show.  
 

Image 1: Crawlers 
 
Once it lands on a webpage, it saves the HTML version of that page in a 
gigantic database, called the i​ ndex​. This index is updated every time the 
crawler comes around your website and finds a new or revised version of it. 
Depending on how important Google deems your site and the number of 
changes you make on your website, the crawler comes around more or less 
often. 
 

The search engine algorithm 

After indexing your website, search engines can show your website in the 
search results. But how do they decide what goes where? Well, search 
engines have an ​algorithm​ that does this for them. The algorithm takes the 
data from the index and calculates which site the user would most likely 
want to view based on their query. 
 
It is very difficult to discover what factors into a search engine algorithm like 
Google’s. Nobody knows exactly which factors decide how Google 
determines search results. Moreover, factors and their importance change 

 
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very often. Testing and experimenting gives us at Yoast a good feel for the 
important factors and the changes in these factors. 
 

How do search engines find your site? 

For a search engine to know of the existence of your website, there first has 
to be a link from another site – one they already know – to your site. 
Following that link will lead to the first crawler-session and the first save in 
the index. In the old days, you could submit your website to a search engine. 
Today, that isn’t possible anymore. Search engines nowadays follow all the 
links on the web. 
 

The value of links for search engines 

It’s very important to have a basic understanding of how Google and most 
other search engines use l​ inks​: they use the number of links pointing to a 
page to determine how important that page is. Both internal links (from the 
own website), as well as external links (from other websites), can help a 
website rank high. 
 
Some links are more important than others: links from websites that have a 
lot of links themselves are generally more important than links from small 
websites with few external links. 
 

Crawlability 
Depending on how you maintain your website, it can be easy or difficult for 
Google to crawl your website. If you have good ​crawlability​, Google will be 
able to index your site without any problems. There are a few ways in which 
a crawler can be blocked from your website. If the website or a page on your 
website is blocked, you’re telling Google’s crawler: “do not come here, this 
area is forbidden”. You won’t turn up in the search results in most of these 
cases. 
 
There are several ways you can prevent Google from accessing certain 
pages. If you want to know more about these methods, check out our 
Technical SEO course​.  
 
 

Advanced: RankBrain 
RankBrain​ is a Google algorithm, but a very advanced one at that. It is a 
machine learning system that helps Google better decipher the meaning 

 
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behind the terms people search for. It serves the best-matching search 
results related to those queries. When RankBrain was first announced, 
Google called it the third most important ranking factor. Presumably, 
RankBrain can somehow summarize what a page is about, evaluate the 
relevance of search results, and teach itself to get even better at it with time. 
The common understanding is that RankBrain, in part, relies on the 
traditional SEO factors (links, content, keywords, etc.), but also looks at other 
factors that are specific to the search term. Then, it identifies the most 
relevant pages in the index and arranges the respective results in SERPs 
(search engine result pages). 
 
 

Advanced: Important Google updates 

Throughout the years, Google introduced several major updates. We’ll 
discuss the most important ones of the last seven years and the implications 
of these updates. 
 
Before we start, let’s talk about how easy it is to get caught up in all the 
changes. But, keeping track of every little update is energy that you could be 
putting into creating great copy or taking measures to reduce site loading 
time, for example. Google’s priority is serving their users, so work to be the 
best result.   
 
Panda (2011) 
In 2011, Google released its first ​Panda update​. This Panda update tried to 
diminish those websites which were purely created to rank in the search 
engines. Panda mostly focused on o
​ n-page factors​. In other words, it 
determined whether the site offered information about the search term 
visitors used. Two types of sites were hit especially hard by the Panda 
update:  
 
 
1. Affiliate sites (sites that mainly exist to link to other pages). 
2. Sites with very thin content.  
 
Google has periodically re-run the Panda algorithm since its first release. 
 
Penguin (2012) 
A year later, Google rolled out the first​ Penguin update​. Penguin particularly 
looked at the ​links​ websites got from other sites. It judged whether the sites 

 
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linking to your website like and admire your products or content. If the links 
were artificial, Google no longer assigned link value. In the past, lots of 
people tried to boost their ranking by buying links. Penguin tried to diminish 
the effect of buying, exchanging or otherwise artificially creating links. 
Websites with a lot of these artificial links got hit hard by this update. They 
lost their place in Google's ranking. This update has also run several times 
since its first inception and is now even said to be run continuously. 
 

 
Image 2: Panda and Penguin updates 

 
Hummingbird (2013) 
In August 2013, Google released ​Hummingbird​. In this update, Google laid 
down the groundwork for ​voice search​. Hummingbird pays more attention 
to each individual word in a query, ensuring that the whole search phrase is 
taken into account, rather than just particular words. This should lead to 
results matching the entire query better. The results were not immediately 
clear, but over time, Google started showing more answer boxes in the 
search results (see Image 1), that gave the answer directly instead of enticing 
people to click on to a web page. Voice search has become more and more 
important as more devices (Siri, Google Home, Alexa) have started using 
voice search.  
 

 
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Image 3: Answer box in Google’s search results 

 
Mobilegeddon (2015) 
In 2015, Google introduced the mobile update, dubbed ‘​Mobilegeddon​’ by 
the industry. As more and more people use Google on mobile devices, 
Google used this update to boost sites that have m
​ obile-friendly pages ​in 
its mobile search results. Around the same time, Google showed that mobile 
devices accounted for over 50% of all search queries.  
 
Possum (2016) 
In September 2016, the P
​ ossum​ ​update​ applied several recent changes to 
Google's ​local ranking filter​. After Possum, Google has shown more varied 
results depending on the physical location of the searcher (the closer you 
are to a business physically, the more likely it is that you'll see it among local 
results) and the phrasing of the query (even very similar variations now 
produce different results). 
 

 
Image 4: Possum update 

 
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Mobile-first index (2018) 

In 2018, Google switched to their ​mobile-first index​. This means Google will 
determine rankings based on the quality of the ​mobile version of the site 
instead of the desktop version. As more and more searches happen on 
mobile, Google wants its index and results to represent the majority of their 
users, who are mobile searchers. A new Googlebot will crawl your mobile 
site and determine if its performance, content and user experience are up to 
scratch. If so, you get a better ranking. If it’s lacking, other sites will rank 
higher and you could lose out. 
 
Medic, or Query Intent Update (2018) 
In the same year, Google released a new update. It was called ​Medic​ by 
reporters, for it seemed to target medical websites at first. However, later it 
was discovered that the update affected organic results in various industries. 
It seemed that this update changed the algorithm to benefit sites that 
matched their top content with h
​ ow a user would ask their question​.  
 
Let’s look at an example: “What is the best way to treat a burn?”. In this case, 
Google’s algorithm can now attempt to deduce the intent of the query. The 
user wants to compare remedies for a burn to know the best one, so Google 
wants to provide the site that gives the absolute best quality answer to this 
question. It’s a different search intent than if you were to search for “treat 
burn”. In that case, Google suggests a how-to guide for burn treatment. 
 
This change eventually resulted in people referring to the update as the 
Query Intent Update​.   
 
Continuous Updates (2018) 
Since 2018, Google has begun updating continuously, resulting in multiple 
small adjustments each day. Also, Google continues to release bigger 
updates, also known as ​core updates​, every few months. This means that it 
becomes increasingly hard to predict the ranking algorithm. So, we advise to 
try and focus on making your site useful for people. If you align your goals 
with Google’s mission you have a better chance at ranking.  
 
BERT (2019) 
Last, but not least, Google has released a ​natural language programming 
model c​ alled BERT. BERT stands for ​Bidirectional Encoder 
Representations from Transformers​. Those are a lot of difficult words to 
say that Google is now better at reading and understanding texts. Before, 

 
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Google could only interpret text in one direction. Whereas now, it can 
associate words in both directions simultaneously. This makes it much easier 
for Google to draw accurate context from texts. In turn, this results in better 
search results. By using BERT, Google can link the appropriate context of 
different sites to the right search query.  
 
 

3. What is SEO? 
In the previous lesson we discussed how a search engine works, but why is it 
important to know about these things? Well, more than a
​ third​ of people 
who use a search engine click on the first result. Furthermore, 6
​ 0%​ of clicks 
on the SERP go to the top three results, which means it makes a world of 
difference to belong to this category.  
 
To become the best result and increase our chances to be found by our 
audiences, we need to practice SEO. Good SEO practices will result in visitors 
that stick around, social media attention and more sales or ad revenue. We’ll 
elaborate on this at a later point in this document. But first, how do we 
define SEO? 
 
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)​ is the profession that attempts to 
optimize sites to make them appear in a high position in the organic search 
results. Organic search results mean that these results aren’t sponsored. The 
rankings of organic search results are determined by a search engine 
algorithm.  
 
Although Google’s algorithm remains secret, a decade of experience in SEO 
has resulted in a pretty good idea about the important factors. In our view, 
the factors in Google’s algorithm can be divided into two categories: 
 
1. There are​ on-page factors​ that decide the ranking of your website. 
These factors include technical issues (e.g. the quality of your code) 
and more textual issues (e.g. structure of your site and text, use of 
words). 
2. There are o
​ ff-page factors​. These factors include links from other 
websites, social media attention, and other marketing activities 
outside your own website. 
 
 
 

 
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4. What is holistic SEO? 

At Yoast, we practice what we call ‘​holistic SEO​’. Holistic means that you look 
at the bigger picture, and not just the smaller parts on their own. For 
example, when you’re growing plants you could just water them and put 
them in the sun. But it’s better if you think about the quality of the soil, and 
how you could prevent them from catching plant flu, too. 
 
Your primary goal should be to build and maintain the best possible website. 
Ranking in Google will come automatically if your website is of extremely 
high quality.  
 
Remember Google’s mission from the previous lesson? Right, their mission 
is to i​ ndex all the world’s information and make it universally 
accessible​. In addition to this, Google, of course, wants to make money. To 
achieve this, they have to make sure people keep using Google. This means 
that they’ll have to show people the results they are looking for. So, if your 
website is the best in your market, Google wants to rank it high in the 
results.  
 
Permanently ranking well in Google demands an e
​ xtensive SEO strategy 
focused on every aspect of your website and its marketing. The technical 
side, the user experience (UX), the content on your website: all need to be 
top-notch. To keep ranking well in Google, you should develop – what we call 
– a holistic SEO approach. 
 

Just make an awesome website! 

Yoast has been giving SEO advice for many years now, but our advice has 
always remained the same. And the advice is simple: you have to make sure 
your site is really, really awesome! An awesome site incorporates all the 
aspects we mention on the next page. Don’t use any ‘tricks’. While some of 
these tricks might get you ranked quickly, they usually don’t work in the long 
run, and they might even backfire. 
 
Google’s mission is to build the perfect search engine that helps people find 
what they are looking for. Making your website and your marketing strategy 
fit this goal is always the way to go. 

 
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How do you develop a holistic SEO strategy? 
What’s important to remember is that you should mainly​ focus on your 
users​ and their experience of your site. Sure, you want your site to match 
what Google’s algorithm is looking for because Google’s mission is to find 
the best result. However, focusing on making a great site for your user will 
lead to better ranking, because you’re offering what they want in the first 
place. So how can you achieve that? 
 

 
Image 5: Holistic SEO is mainly about focusing on your users 
 

A holistic approach to SEO means you focus on all the following aspects: 
 
Proper keyword research 
Keyword research​ means that you find the words your audience uses when 
they look for products or information you offer. When you know which 
words your audience uses you can integrate them in your copywriting. This 
way, your audience will literally find what they’re searching for. 
 
Good technical SEO 
A user likes a fast site, and so does Google. By practicing ​good technical SEO 
you make it both quicker to load for users, but also more crawlable by 
Google. A proper s​ ite structure​ will make your site more easy to use, too.  
 
A great user experience 
By increasing your site speed you increase u
​ ser experience​, but there’s more 
to it. Your audience won’t like a site that’s difficult to navigate, or that has 

 
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confusing content. Try and browse your site from the perspective of a user. 
Does it feel the way you want it to feel? 
 
Writing quality content 
By ​quality content​, we mean content that is easy to read, to-the-point, and, 
most importantly, useful. Your audience wants helpful content that provides 
them with answers to their questions. 
 
A solid social media strategy 
There are other platforms that can help you reach people. And the best 
thing about it is that it will help you rank, too. Invest in a s​ ocial media 
strategy​ in order to create buzz for your website and garner attention. 
 
Mobile optimization 
Many, many people browse the web on a mobile phone nowadays. Make 
sure to research how your website translates to a mobile browser and what 
you need to do to o
​ ptimize mobile user experience​. 
 
Security 
Providing a s​ ecure environment​ for you and your users is important for your 
trustworthiness. Examples of this are using complicated passwords for your 
accounts and using ​HTTPS​.  
 
Accessibility 
Last, but not least, you have to make sure your website is accessible for 
everyone. As a simple example, consider how a blind person would navigate 
your site. Is it very difficult? Then read up on a
​ ccessibility​ so everyone can 
enjoy your website. 
 

Why would you apply a holistic SEO approach? 

Having an awesome website with high-quality content and great user 
experience will not instantly improve your ranking. In the long run, though, it 
will definitely affect your SEO positively! 
  
Attractive websites have a lower bounce rate, which is the rate at which 
people leave the website. People are less likely to stick around when they 
feel like the website isn’t giving them what they’re looking for. If the page 
looks secure and safe, it shows information clearly and it’s quick to navigate, 
there’s a higher chance people will stick around and browse. 

 
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In addition, attractive websites have a much higher chance of receiving 
social media attention​. When people share your site, Google will notice 
the social media attention it’s receiving. This is good for your SEO. 
  
Awesome websites will also result in​ higher conversion rates​. Conversion 
happens every time a visitor completes a desired action on your website, like 
buying a product. If your audience likes and understands your website, the 
chance of them buying your products or returning to your website is much 
higher. 
 
Now we know different aspects of a holistic SEO strategy. But how do you 
put that into practise? The upcoming example tells the story of Linda, who 
applies her skills and network in able to start optimizing her website. 
 
 

Example: What might an SEO beginner do? 

Linda is an ambitious potter who wants to expand her business and start a 
blog site about the work she does. This way she hopes to establish some 
internet presence, which she hopes will inspire people to buy her ornate 
vases, and build a bigger network. She puts in hours of work, designing a 
beautiful site. She did it all by herself and she feels very proud. Yet, she 
discovers that the site doesn’t get as much traffic as she would like. Linda 
wants to improve her site ranking on Google so more people will find it, but 
she’s not sure how. 
 

 
Image 6: Linda is an ambitious potter 
 

 
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Linda talks to a few friends who work in marketing, and she gathers several 
options to climb the search platform ranks.  
1. She could write quality blogs and improve her site’s internal linking.  
2. She could try to join or build a community that will provide her site 
with useful links.  
3. She could improve her site speed. 
 
She decides to start off writing and publishing a blog about how traditional 
Dutch pottery inspires her because her shop customers have been asking 
her questions about that. She also writes a detailed how-to on building your 
own mini oven for baking pottery in your backyard. She was about to build 
one for her friend anyway! Linda puts relevant links to her own site in her 
blog. 
 
For her next move, Linda decides to scour internet forums for like-minded 
pottery bloggers and she makes some new friends. By creating a community 
they can help each other out. Not only by providing each other with links 
that make sense, but also by inspiring awesome new content. 
 
Lastly, she texts her tech-savvy aunt for some help. In exchange for a pottery 
lesson, her aunt shows Linda how she can optimize her website’s speed. The 
load time of her page decreased noticeably just by downsizing some of the 
pictures she was using! Happy with the changes, Linda coaches her aunt in 
shaping her first bowl on the pottery wheel. 
 
At first, her ranking doesn’t seem to change much. But, Linda continues 
working on her website. She diligently and holistically maintains her posts 
and pages. Sometimes it’s hard to combine with her crafting, but she has a 
well organised calendar to help her out. After some time the search engine 
seems to pick up on her expertise and bumps up her ranking. Sweet success! 

5. Don’t use any tricks 

Applying a holistic SEO approach means to stay away from short-term 
tactics. Tactics like these focus on trying to exploit loopholes in Google’s 
algorithms, and they try to get websites to rank higher than they actually 
deserve. A few examples of these tricks are: 
 
● Keyword stuffing 

 
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Some sites try to change their ranking by filling pages with 

(unrelated) keywords or numbers. These keywords often appear out 
of context, for example in a list or group. Sometimes they even use 
white text to hide the fact that they are stuffing keywords. 
 
● Link building 
There’s white-hat link building, where you build an engaged 
community and promote your website to relevant people, but there 
are black-hat strategies of link building as well. Some sites try to rank 
higher by buying links. This includes paying for links, but also 
sending someone a free product in exchange for a link. 
 
● Page swapping 
Page swapping is a trick for getting ranked for one page, and then, 
after the page has attained a good position in the search results, 
replacing that page for another. 
 

 
Image 7: Don’t use short-term tactics or you’ll get penalized 
 

Google has updated its algorithms to account for these tricks, such as the 
Penguin update. You can read about these updates in the reading materials 
of the previous lesson. With the updates, fishy websites who used bad SEO 
tricks were heavily ​penalized​. Using similar tactics can get you banned from 
Google for a significant period of time. What we want you to do is create a 
sustainable SEO strategy​, which will not only have you rank today but in 
the long run as well. The better Google’s algorithm becomes, the less 
effective these tactics will be. 
 
 
 

 
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Key takeaways 
● Search engines use crawlers to f​ ind your site​ by following links. If 
they find your site, it will be saved in the index. After indexing your 
website, search engines can show your website in the search results. 
The position in the search results is decided by a secret algorithm. 
● SEO​ is the practice of optimizing websites to make them reach a high 
position in a search engine’s search results.  
● At Yoast, we believe that h
​ olistic SEO​ is the best way to become the 
best result because you focus on making every aspect of your site 
great.  
● We advise you to not do any ​short-term tricks​ because, in the long 
run, this will have negative consequences for your ranking. Instead, 
we recommend you to practice ​sustainable SEO​, where you keep 
the user in mind. 
 
 
 

 
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