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SEO basics flashcards

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SEO basicsStart from zero · 1 of 11

What is SEO, in one plain sentence?

SEO means search engine optimisation: making your pages easy for search engines to find, understand and show to people who are looking for exactly what you offer.

Be easy to find, easy to read, worth the click.
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What you will learn

  1. Start from zero

    • What SEO is4 cards
    • Key words5 cards
    • Getting ready2 cards

  2. Core basics

    • How search engines find pages5 cards
    • Page basics6 cards
    • Keywords and search intent4 cards
    • Content and trust3 cards

  3. Next steps

    • Technical SEO6 cards
    • Structured data and rich results3 cards
    • Page experience3 cards
    • Links and local3 cards
    • Measuring results3 cards

  4. Go deeper

    • Algorithms and spam policies4 cards
    • AI search and snippets3 cards
    • Large sites and migrations4 cards
    • Rendering and crawling at scale3 cards
    • Strategy and audits3 cards

Final test and certificate

10 questions drawn fresh from the whole topic, about 15 minutes. Sign in, score 80% or more and get a free certificate with your name and a public check link anyone can open, such as an employer or a teacher. Not signed in? Try a practice test from the cards.

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About these cards

  • Reviewed 26 October 2026
  • CoversGoogle Search Essentials (2026)Core Web Vitals: LCP, INP, CLSSchema.org vocabulary
How these cards are made

SEO basics at a glance

SEO (search engine optimisation) is the work of making your pages easy for search engines to find, understand and show to the right people.

A search engine is a huge library. SEO is giving your book a clear title, a good table of contents and a place on the right shelf, so the librarian can hand it to the reader who asks.

Words you will meet

Query
The words a person types or speaks into a search box
Keyword
A word or phrase you want your page to be found for
Crawler
A program that visits web pages and reads them, like Googlebot
Index
The search engine's giant list of pages it has read and saved
Ranking
The order in which results are shown for a query
Organic result
A normal search result that nobody paid for
Backlink
A link from another website to yours
Snippet
The title and short text a search engine shows for your page

The steps

  1. 1. Start from zero (11 cards): What SEO is, how search engines find and rank pages, and the key words you will need.
  2. 2. Core basics (18 cards): Crawling and indexing, titles and descriptions, keywords, search intent and helpful content.
  3. 3. Next steps (18 cards): Redirects, JavaScript, structured data, Core Web Vitals, links, local and Search Console.
  4. 4. Go deeper (17 cards): Core updates, spam policies, AI search, large sites, migrations, logs and strategy.
All 11 cards in Start from zero
What is SEO, in one plain sentence?
SEO means search engine optimisation: making your pages easy for search engines to find, understand and show to people who are looking for exactly what you offer.
When you type a question into a search box, what three jobs has the search engine already done?
It has crawled the web (visited pages), indexed them (saved what each page is about) and now it ranks them (puts the most useful ones first for your words).
Explain a search engine with a library picture.
The crawler is a librarian walking the shelves, the index is the catalogue of every book, and ranking is the librarian picking the best three books for your question.
Why do shops and bloggers care so much about SEO?
Visitors from normal search results are free and arrive with a need. Karthik's bakery page that ranks for 'eggless cake near me' gets orders without paying for ads.
What is the difference between a query and a keyword?
A query is what a real person types, like 'how long to boil an egg'. A keyword is the phrase you choose to aim a page at, like 'boil an egg'.
What is a crawler, and what is the index?
A crawler is a program that visits pages and reads them, like Googlebot. The index is the huge saved list of pages the crawler read and understood.
Organic result or ad: how do you tell them apart on a results page?
Ads carry a 'Sponsored' label and appear because someone paid. Organic results appear because the search engine judged them most useful. SEO is about the organic ones.
What is a backlink, and why does it count?
A backlink is a link from another website to yours. Links from trusted, related sites act like recommendations and help search engines trust your page.
What is a snippet in search results?
The snippet is the blue title and short grey text shown for your page. A clear snippet makes people click your result instead of the one above.
What do you need before you start learning SEO?
A web page you can edit (a blog, shop or site builder is fine), a free Google Search Console account to see how Google sees it, and curiosity about what people search.
What will you be able to do after this topic?
Get pages indexed, write titles that win clicks, pick keywords people really use, read Search Console, fix common errors, and avoid the tricks that get sites punished.
SEO basics cheatsheet

Head tags

  • <title>Topic | Brand</title> Result headline, about 50 to 60 chars
  • <meta name="description" content="..."> Snippet text, sells the click
  • <link rel="canonical" href="..."> Preferred URL for duplicates
  • <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> Keep page out of results
  • <link rel="alternate" hreflang="ta" href> Language versions
  • <meta name="robots" content="max-snippet:50"> Limit snippet length

robots.txt

  • User-agent: * Rules for all crawlers
  • Disallow: /cart/ Do not crawl this folder
  • Allow: /cart/help Exception inside a blocked folder
  • Sitemap: https://site/sitemap.xml Where the sitemap is
  • User-agent: Google-Extended Gemini training control

Status codes

  • 200 OK, page served
  • 301 Moved for good, pass signals
  • 302 Moved for now
  • 404 Not found
  • 410 Gone for good
  • 503 Down for maintenance, try later

Search Console

  • URL Inspection Index status of one URL, request indexing
  • Performance Clicks, impressions, CTR, position by query
  • Pages (indexing) Why URLs are or are not indexed
  • Sitemaps Submit and check sitemaps
  • Manual actions Penalties applied by reviewers
  • Core Web Vitals Real-user speed by URL group

Core Web Vitals

  • LCP <= 2.5 s Main content shows fast
  • INP <= 200 ms Taps get a quick response
  • CLS < 0.1 Layout stays still
  • 75th percentile How each metric is judged
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