SEO Optimize for your website.
What is SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of orienting your website to rank higher on a search engine results page (SERP) so that you receive more traffic. The aim is typically to rank on the first page of Google results for search terms that mean the most to your target audience. So, SEO is as much about understanding the wants and needs of your audience as it is about the technical nature of how to configure your website.
Why is SEO important?
Every day, Google users conduct billions of searches for information and products. It’s no surprise that search engines are usually one of the biggest traffic sources to websites. To harness this traffic source’s potential, you need to appear in the top search results for your target keywords. The correlation is very simple—the higher you rank, the more people will visit your page. The No. 1 organic result is 10x more likely to receive a click than a page ranking in position No. 10. And the top three organic results get more than 50% of all the clicks.
This is where SEO enters the picture.
Search engine optimization plays a key role in improving your ranking positions. Better rankings mean more traffic. And more traffic means new customers and more brand awareness.In other words, neglecting SEO would mean neglecting one of the most important traffic channels—leaving that space completely to your competitors.
How does SEO work?
Google uses relatively complex processes, known as “algorithms,” to rank pages.These algorithms take into account a huge number of ranking factors to decide where a specific page should rank.You don’t need to know how search algorithms work. (Actually, nobody does with 100% certainty.) However, knowing the basics can help you better understand how SEO works and what it takes to optimize your pages to rank in Google.
The role of SEO.
The goal of SEO is to raise your ranking in organic search results. There are different practices for optimizing AdWords, shopping, and local results. While it may appear that so many competing elements taking up real estate on SERPs push the organic listings down, SEO can still be a very powerful, lucrative effort. Considering that Google processes billions of search queries daily, organic search results are a very large slice of a very large pie. And while there is some up-front and ongoing investment required to secure and maintain organic rankings, every click that sends traffic to your website is completely free. Written by Patrick Hathaway for Mailchimp. Patrick is a co-founder of Sitebulb, a technical SEO auditing tool.
Which SEO factors influence search engine?
Optimizing your site generally involves three key focus areas: On-page, off-page and technical SEO. On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing your website contents so search engines and humans can easily digest it. Technical SEO is any sufficient technical action undertaken with the intent of improving search results, usually through making your site function efficiently. Off-page SEO involves actions taken outside of your website to impact your rankings. Together they combine to create a solid foundation to enable you to reach your target audience.
