Publishing an article like this—about a keyword that’s insanely competitive, where I’m up against absolute giants and Google would much rather rank their content than mine—is, from an SEO point of view, a pretty bad move.

But I’m counting on one thing: I’m counting on you—the person who probably landed on this page through a direct link to my website.

Now let me explain why I say this is a bad move. And while I do, you’ll also figure out what SEO actually is, who an SEO specialist is, and what they really do.

Let’s rewind for a second.

Think back to the day you launched your website—or hired someone to build it for you. Everything was ready, and there you were, sitting back, hoping people would find it.

One week went by.

Then two.

Then three.

A month.

Six months.

And still… almost no traffic. No rankings. Hardly any calls. No sales.

At that point, you start thinking…

Something has to be wrong.

So what’s the problem?

Your website hasn’t been optimized for SEO.

So… what is SEO?

As you’ve probably figured out by now, just having a website doesn’t automatically mean you’ll get traffic or make sales. But it is a requirement.

Because before Google can rank your website and show it to people searching for what you offer, it first has to know your website even exists.

Then it needs to see that you’re serious about what you do. That you’re consistently publishing content. That you’re providing people with genuinely useful information, products, or services.

At the end of the day, every time Google recommends a website, it’s putting its own reputation on the line.

If people keep clicking on search results they don’t like, Google loses trust. That’s why it’s incredibly careful about what it shows users. It doesn’t just rank any website.

And this is exactly where SEO—and SEO specialists—come in.

An SEO specialist works on your website so that, in Google’s eyes, it becomes worthy of being shown to users.

Or, to put it the way we SEO people usually do: we optimize your website for search engines.

To understand what an SEO specialist actually does, we first need to understand the different parts of SEO.

The Different Types of SEO

We usually divide SEO into three main categories. And your SEO specialist’s job is to keep an eye on all three, make sure everything’s working properly, and fix whatever needs fixing.

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO is everything that’s done on your website’s pages to help them rank better.

Things like optimizing page titles and headings, writing better meta descriptions (those short bits of text you see under a page title in Google’s search results), improving internal linking so Google can find and understand your pages more easily, optimizing images so they don’t take forever to load, and plenty of other improvements.

Creating genuinely useful, high-quality content also falls into this category.

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO is everything that happens outside your website to help Google trust your site more.

For example, getting backlinks from other websites in your industry.

From Google’s perspective, that’s basically a vote of confidence. It’s other businesses saying, “Yeah, these guys know what they’re talking about.”

Brand awareness also fits into this category to some extent. The more your brand name gets mentioned around the web, the better.

Now, not all of that is directly under your SEO specialist’s control.

But building backlinks consistently? That definitely is.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is everything happening behind the scenes—the technical side of your website.

Things like checking whether your website loads fast enough (because let’s be honest, nobody’s going to wait five minutes for a page to load), making sure your website works properly on every device, checking that your XML sitemap is set up correctly so Google understands your site’s structure, or making sure Google can actually crawl and index your pages without running into problems.

That’s all technical SEO.

And it’s your SEO specialist’s job to stay on top of all of it.

Once these things are taken care of, you can be confident that, over time, Google will start giving your website the rankings it deserves.

So now you’re probably wondering…

If writing an article about a topic like this is such a bad SEO move, why did I do it anyway?

The answer is simple.

At the time you’re reading this, my website’s SEO journey is still in its early stages.

Competing against websites that have been working on their SEO for years—publishing content consistently, earning backlinks, and investing serious money into marketing—isn’t exactly easy.

And this keyword? It’s one of the most competitive ones out there.

So if I were following my own content strategy, I’d probably be better off starting with less competitive topics first and gradually working my way up to keywords like this.

Which, by the way, is another important part of an SEO specialist’s job.

A good SEO specialist doesn’t just optimize websites.

They build a content strategy.

They know how to spot growth opportunities. They know which keywords give you a realistic chance of ranking today, and which ones you should save for later—after your website has built enough authority.

That’s how you gradually move from easier keywords to the high-volume, highly competitive ones.

Now, to be fair…

I didn’t write this article expecting Google to send me thousands of visitors.

I wrote it mainly for people who landed on my website directly.

Otherwise, trust me, I know better.

I know content needs a strategy. And I know that one of the biggest responsibilities of an SEO specialist is finding those opportunities and building a roadmap around them instead of randomly publishing articles and hoping for the best.

So if I had to sum SEO up in one sentence, I’d say this:

SEO is the process of earning Google’s trust.

That’s really what it’s all about.

And here at Digital Zarin, that’s exactly what we help businesses do.

If you’d like to get more organic traffic, build a stronger brand, increase your credibility, and ultimately grow your sales, fill out our consultation form.

We’d genuinely love to help.