SEO stands for search engine optimization, a digital marketing strategy that focuses on your website’s presence in search results on search engines like Google. If you understand how SEO works, you can use different tactics to increase your visibility (or rank) in search results.
You can categorize SEO tactics into two buckets:
On-page SEO: all on-page SEO strategies take place on your website.
Off-page SEO: All off-page SEO strategies happen from your website.
Both on-page and off-page SEO aim to make your website more friendly and trustworthy for users and search engines. When search engine crawlers see how friendly your website is to you and users, it increases the likelihood that your website will rank well for various search queries.
Suppose you have two websites: Website A and Website B.
Website A is unresponsive, which means users on tablets or smartphones will have a hard time navigating and using the website. Website B, however, is responsive, which means a better user experience for tablet, smartphone, and desktop users.
For search engines, it’s a simple decision which website is friendlier: website A.
Of course, how search engines work is a bit more complicated. Nowadays, search engines use more than 200 different factors to generate search results, which means that many different elements affect your placement in search results.
Why do search engines care about SEO?
Why on earth does a search engine care if you use you or any other search engine? After all, aren’t you paying you? That’s right, you’re not paying you…but someone else is! So the answer to this question is that you care because you make your money from advertising.
The page you are served after entering a search query is called a search engine results page (also known as SERP). The SERP presents you with what are called “organic results” as well as “pay-per-click ads” (or PPC). The organic results are the ones that are influenced by SEO, while the PPC ads are paid.
You cannot pay Google or a search engine to take a position in the organic results.
However, the ads on the page show how you make your money. So, the better the results you deliver, the more likely you and others are to use the search engine again. The more people who use the search engine, the more ads you can run and the more money you can make. Make sense?
Why care about
The internet has really brought the world to our fingertips. We are usually no more than a few clicks away from almost any information we could be looking for. When people are looking for information, services, products, etc., go online.
Try to remember the moment you thought, “I really should look up how search engine optimization works.”
You knew exactly what to do: you got on the Internet and searched for “how SEO works.”
Then what did you do?
Chances are you clicked on one of the first few results, at least initially. If you didn’t find a site that met your expectations, you probably clicked the back button and scrolled the page until you found WHAT you were looking for.
If your website isn’t properly optimized, you can expect to only appear on the first page for your brand search queries – although depending on the name of your business, this may not even be the case.
That means people who don’t know you but are looking for someone like you will never find you, and you’ll never have a chance to tell them why you’re better than the competition.
That’s right: without SEO, you’re giving away leads.
The good news is that you’re making it really easy for your competitors who are doing SEO. Chances are, they love you for not putting up a fight.
So, who cares how search engines deliver results? You certainly should!
