Everybody has to start somewhere when it comes to learning about SEO. If you’re new to using digital marketing for your business, this article is a good place to start. SEO can seem like a complicated concept and many successful business owners have asked me over the years, “What Is SEO?”
SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is the process of tweaking a website in order to increase the quantity and quality of traffic from Google and other search engines. In simple terms, if you want your website to rank better in Google, SEO is what you’re looking for.
The Two Main Types Of SEO
There are two main categories of SEO that most optimization tasks will fall under: Content SEO and Technical SEO. Content SEO is the process of optimizing the text, images, and other content of your website in order to allow search engine to better understand what your business and website are about. Optimizing things like keyword focus, meta titles, and image alt tags fall under content SEO.
Technical SEO is about making your website experience the best possible for your users and the search engine robots. This includes things like page speed optimization, security enhancements, and mobile improvements.
On-Site vs. Off-Site SEO
Search engines like Google use both on-site and off-site signals to determine where your website should rank for each user search. Because of this, SEO will require you to optimize things on your website and things off site. Off-site SEO tasks may include things like optimizing your Google My Business listing or building links into your website.
A Long Term Strategy
SEO is a long term strategy. I’ll say that again, SEO IS A LONG TERM STRATEGY. It is important to understand that optimizing a website for search takes time to do, and the results take time to achieve. But the good news is, it takes time to get to the top of the search results, and it takes time for competitors to knock you off those top spots once you have earned them.
What Are The Benefits?
It’s pretty clear what being on page 1 of Google for the most important search terms could mean for your business. Unlike PPC ads, organic SEO traffic is free. If you optimize for the right terms it could mean thousands of qualified customers on your website ready to buy.
