SEO in a Nutshell

I wrote this post in Spanish in 2021 and adapted it to English in 2026.

Today I want to put my ideas down in what I hope will be a "brief" summary of what SEO is.

Well, as brief as you can be about a topic that's huge, constantly mutating and, once you get a taste for it, can become truly fascinating.

I'll start with the most basic thing: what the letters stand for. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.

Now... What is it?

What Is SEO? #

To be honest, it's a lot like faith, once you realize there's nothing you can do to guarantee the results you {want|desire|crave}.

You focus on following all the "best practices" Google recommends, and you may get no results at all.

In other words, SEO is a lot like the lottery, or a slot machine. In what sense? In that you do, do, do, and then you wait to see if you win, hopefully soon.

A win that may come, or not.

And that's the big kick in the teeth of SEO (some people call it magic).

Now that you know there are no secrets or magic tricks (just work and dedication), you can keep reading this post.

SEO Splits into Two Big Disciplines #

• On-page SEO
• Off-page SEO

Both disciplines split into several branches.

What is on-page SEO?

On-page SEO covers all the options, settings and optimizations you can make at the page level.

Remember that a website is made up of several pages, all contained within the same parent address (the root domain), and everything you can optimize there counts as on-page SEO.

What is off-page SEO?

Off-page SEO, on the other hand, refers to the optimizations you can make outside your website, and it boils down to one word: links.

"Links" are hyperlinks that point to your website, and how, when and where we place them, plus the text you use for the link (and the text around it), is called "link building".

Links pointing to your site are also called "backlinks", and building them is "link building".

Now you know SEO is optimizing inside and outside your website. However, SEO also has other "classes" that refer to the techniques used, or the emphasis you put on certain aspects.

The "Classes" or "Types" of SEO #

• White hat SEO
• Black hat SEO
• Semantic SEO
• Technical SEO

I won't tell you it's "impossible" to specialize in all of them. I'll tell you it's best to shape yourself as a professional in just one of these branches, so you don't get overwhelmed by all the disciplines you'd need to know to understand what SEO is in each of its classes.

What is white hat SEO?

White hat SEO is just reading all the good webmaster guidelines Google has published and then applying them, period.

In other words, you stick to everything Google says is okay, "dancing to the tune Google plays", never stepping out of line and always afraid of "penalties".

What is white hat SEO and when is it worth using? It's recommended for websites of brands, companies and businesses that could be badly hurt by a penalty.

It takes a long time to grow following Google's guidelines, but it's the most stable growth of all, because once you're at the top of the search results (since you didn't "cheat"), you're unlikely to fall.

What is black hat SEO?

Black hat SEO is going against the current. In a nutshell, it's going your own way, doing things Google is fine with, others it doesn't like much, and others it explicitly asks you not to do, or else.

Why do people do this?

Because it works.

What is black hat SEO and when is it worth using? It's ideal for building niche sites that aren't flagship brands, or rather, sites you can walk away from if they get penalized.

What does it involve?

Automation, links built on link farms, hiding information from users to manipulate their behavior: these are just some of the practices considered black hat SEO.

It's a pretty complex little world where knowing how to code will give you an extra edge over other black hatters.

While it's true that applying black hat SEO techniques will make you grow like crazy, it's also true that you're vulnerable to being penalized by Google.

So it's playing with fire and walking a knife's edge. But believe me when I tell you that without black hat, Google's good webmaster guidelines wouldn't exist, and it's the black hatters who push Big Brother to get better as a search engine.

What is gray hat SEO?

I won't spend long explaining what gray hat SEO is, since you can probably guess what it's about just from the name.

And yes, gray hat SEO is just taking the best of both worlds: black and white.

Following the good webmaster guidelines while buying links from link farms is a good example of gray hat SEO.

What is semantic SEO?

Links (the famous backlinks) are the cornerstone of organic rankings on Google, because the company with the big G has used them as a sign of "popularity" to tell whether content is relevant or not.

The real formula is pretty complex, but just remember this: the more links point to a website, the more "relevant" the content is to users in Google's eyes.

That's how it went until the end of the 2010s, when Google slammed its fist on the table and said its artificial intelligence was now so good it could analyze language "naturally".

It called its algorithm "BERT", and with it, Google hoped to depend less on links to tell whether content was good or not.

Did it work?

It depends.

It depends on who you ask, because the truth is links are still the biggest signal, or rather, the most important factor when it comes to ranking on Google.

But what is semantic SEO? A branch that was born to optimize everything so BERT understands your website better, and the truth is, it gets results.

Combining semantic SEO with good on-page SEO can get you results similar to what $2,000 worth of bought links might get you.

What is technical SEO?

Technical SEO requires a skill I personally think every human being should have at least a little of (like reading, for example), and that's programming.

When you understand code, you can optimize a website to levels few mortals reach using plugins and other crap you can bolt onto WordPress (of course there's technical SEO for WordPress, but that's a topic for another post).

It's about making your website optimized for browsing by both human users and robots.

With a strong emphasis on Google's robots.

When you optimize so search engine robots better understand the content you present on your website, you're optimizing everything at a technical level, and that's why this flavor of SEO is known by that name.