Search engine optimization, or SEO as it is often referred, is the process of generating website visibility and traffic from unpaid, organic and natural search engine results. SEO employees a number of strategies, techniques and tactics to improve a website’s search engine ranking. Improving the ranking of a website’s search engine results page (commonly known as SERP) helps ensure that a website is visible and accessible by both search engines and internet searchers.
Generally speaking, the higher ranked a website on a search result page appears and the more frequently it appears, the more traffic it will receive from search engine users. Simply put, the higher the organic or natural search engine ranking for a website, the greater the chance the website will be visited by a user. Furthermore, most internet searchers will not click through page after page of search results, therefore ranking high on the first page is essential for increasing traffic to a site.
Search engine optimization, as an internet marketing strategy, focuses on how search engines determine their search results. All search engines, including Google and Bing, have search results where website pages are displayed and ranked based on what their specific search engine algorithm deems to be the most relevant to users based on the search terms entered. Search engine crawlers, armed with algorithms, use a number of different variables when crawling and ranking a site. SEO can even target the different types of search such as image search, local or map search and video search.
The process of optimizing a website for optimal search engine rankings involves a number of components however they are typically broken down into two main categories: on-site (or on-page) optimization and off-site (or off-page) optimization.
As you may have guessed, on-site optimization refers to all optimization that occurs on a website or page itself. Items like creating, editing and generating new content (with a blog for example), optimizing page titles, site linking, HTML, alt tags, sitemaps, robots, meta data and coding can go a long way to increasing a websites relevance in relation to specific keywords.
Off-site optimization deals with all the SEO elements that take place off or away from a website. Items such as adding quality backlinks or inbound links and improving social media performance are off-site SEO tactics that can really make a difference especially for more competitive keywords.
Do I Need Search Engine Optimization?