Search engine optimization, most often referred to by its abbreviation “SEO” is a common approach in online marketing that aims to bring increased quality traffic to your website. As the name suggests, the traffic arrives through searches in search engine results; and when it is employed effectively, SEO improves your search rankings so that you are more visible to searchers. Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines rely on an algorithm that links search terms to the most relevant websites. SEO is a process by which you can communicate to search engines that your website is the most relevant for particular search terms. Let’s have a closer look.
Fundamentally, search engine algorithms want to match websites with quality traffic. For example, if a user searches “local book stores,” it wouldn’t be helpful if search engines directed users to libraries in Timbuktu. From a business perspective, it is likewise mutually beneficial for searchers to arrive at your page because it offers the kind of information, service, or product they are looking for.
SEO helps to ensure that you receive quality traffic to your website in a way that is not only beneficial to you but to your potential customers as well.
Search engines such as Google rely on “crawlers” to obtain information about the content that’s on the internet which is then input through the algorithm to match that content with search terms. SEO involves utilizing quality content (including blogs, videos, and product descriptions, for example), title tags, meta descriptions, social media references, and internal links that tell the algorithm that your site is THE site.
A well-optimized site includes content that is useful for visitors to your site. It includes relevant topics as well as links to other related sites, but also links to your site. One of the keys to understanding SEO is that once you think you know everything you need to know, you’ll learn that things are always changing. Over time, algorithms have gotten more sophisticated — whereas in the early days of online searching algorithms were essentially looking for keyword density on sites; today things are much more complex. As the needs and desires of web browsers have evolved, so too have the search engine algorithms.
All this to say, SEO is a dynamic process that must respond to the increasingly complex and sophisticated nature of the search engine algorithms. And this makes sense. A static website that never changes or updates is not likely to reflect current trends or information.
Even as computers and processors have become more advanced, our ability to engage with different types of media online has advanced as well. SEO helps to keep your website relevant with the times to ensure that your visitors are engaged because their needs are being met.
