SEO

SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It’s the practice of increasing both the quality and of website traffic, as well as exposure to your brand, through non-paid (also known as "organic") search engine results.

In other words, SEO involves making certain changes to your website design and content that make your site more attractive to a search engine. You do this in hopes that the search engine will display your website as a top result on the search engine results page.

Though search engine optimization can get quite complex when it comes to all the different factors that impact your ranking, the basic process is not as difficult to understand.

Search engines want to provide the best service for their users. This means delivering results on the search engine pages that are not only high quality but also relevant to what the searcher is looking for.

In order to do this, search engines will scan, or crawl, different websites to better understand what the site is about. This helps them deliver more relevant results to those who are searching for certain topics or keywords.

Similarly, the search engines will scan the site to determine how easy it is to navigate and read, rewarding user-friendly sites with higher rankings on the search engine results page.

SEO is the process that organizations go through to help make sure that their site ranks high in the search engines for relevant keywords and phrases. For instance, let’s say that you have an article about how to build a birdhouse.

In order to get your content in front of the right people, you want to try to optimize your this blog post so that it will show up as a top result for anyone who searches for the phrase “build a birdhouse.”

As fun as it is to say, no: SEO is not dead. SEO is still a vital part of online marketing; and unless the way we search for content changes drastically, it will be for a long time. Businesses looking for immediate leads and conversions may neglect SEO in favor of more direct, targeted approaches like paid search and paid social; but businesses that invest in SEO are investing in the long term.

SEO is cost-efficient, casts a wide net, and allows potential prospects to discover your brand on their own terms. Go ahead and enter the query “is seo dead” into Google. The post you ultimately click on is only in a position to be clicked because—you guessed it—effective SEO.

They have their own roles to play. You couldn’t establish domain authority, organic brand affinity, and really, a wholly formed online presence without SEO. By the same token, you couldn’t granularly target prospects by demographic, behaviors, or keywords without PPC.

Backlinks and internal links are incredibly important for SEO. So long as the backlinks you are receiving come from reputable sources with high authority, this will drastically affect your ability to rank, and rank well.

Think about it: if authoritative sources are linking out to you, they are telling their viewers that you content is valuable enough that they feel that the users could benefit from it. Internal links are also helpful for SEO, when linking appropriate content on your site to other relevant locations of your site.

In simple terms, it means writing content that uses the words and phrases your ideal customers use when typing questions or queries into search engines.

It could take a few months to a year for you to see any significant increase in rankings. SEO is an ongoing task and should be monitored and edited consistently. Most commonly, if SEO is done correctly, you can begin to see your website rank between 4-6 months. Depending on how competitive the key phrase/term is that you are trying to rank for, the time may vary.

The cost of SEO depends on the nature of your business and the market in which you operate. If, for example, you only sell locally and don't have much competition, securing the number 1 spot for a specific search term will be simple, and therefore won't require much money.

Yes, you can. However, the rules of the SEO game are constantly changing, and it can be very difficult to keep up. SEO is a competitive practice and requires years of experience to fully harness its potential. With the help of an SEO specialist, your odds of increasing rank and becoming found on Google becomes significantly more likely.