Every industry has a unique vocabulary. It can sound almost unintelligible to outsiders at times. Words, abbreviations, and acronyms take on new meanings depending on their context or arise seemingly out of nothing. That’s as true in digital marketing as in any other job. And among the many acronyms that digital marketers use is “SEO”.
What do these letters stand for, and do you need them for your business? This article is an introduction to the meaning of the term. I won’t get into the “how-to” here – that’s a huge topic, and there are many great resources for it already. For now, I want you to have a general overview of what SEO means and what you can get from it.
What SEO Is
SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization.” In the simplest terms, it means improving your website so that it ranks higher in search engines like Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo!, and of course, Google. It’s just one of the areas of work that makes up digital marketing.
The results are seen on the search engine results page (SERP). SEO only has to do with organic search results – that is, unpaid rankings. Search engine companies want the best content rank first. It does make business sense – they’re seen as trustworthy and therefore get used. They then sell other advertising to make money.
Why SEO Is Important
Ranking web pages is a daunting task. As of 2019, there were around 1.7 billion websites. That’s sites, not pages. Many sites have multiple pages. An extreme example is Amazon. They sell over 600 million products – with a page for each one. That’s a lot of ranking pages to do.
It’s important to remember, too, that pages get ranked, not sites. You could rank well for certain pages but still struggle with others. A strong site overall may help the ranking of individual pages, but it’s not a guarantee.
For instance, you could run a home improvement site. Your article on hammers might rank first for searches of “the best hammers for 10 penny nails.” But other articles or your homepage might not rank well at all. SEO has to look at each page individually to see how to improve it.
It may seem obvious that when people search, they usually click on one of the first results. Over 75% of all clicks on the SERP are on the top 3 results. Few people scroll to the bottom of the first page of results, let only clicking to other pages.
If you want to be found, you need to rank high. SEO is how you do that. The difficulty of doing it depends on what searches you want to rank for.
What Goes Into SEO
So, what exactly makes up SEO? What do you need to do? It’s rather complex. Some of it is clear-cut; other parts are more subjective. And some aspects are based on educated guesses after lots of research.
User experience, in its broadest sense, is the real key. Often, people limit it to mean how your page looks and how easy it is to navigate. But the most important part of their experience is your content.
People use a search engine because they are looking for something – that’s what puts the “search” in SEO. It could be information. Maybe it’s a product or a service they’re ready to pay for. The most important thing is that they find the content they’re looking for. Otherwise, it’s a bad experience right out of the box. This is why it’s often said that “content is king.” If you provide top-flight content, you’re well on your way to ranking well.
Good content is the first and most important part of SEO. Using the right words – keywords – is still important. But it’s also essential to understand “user intention.” What is the user looking for? Does your content address the point they want to know about? Research into how people search and what they search for is essential.
There are other factors in SEO as well.
Pages need to load quickly. We all hate to be kept waiting, especially when it comes to our technology. That means they need to be coded well. Any images or videos also have to be optimized so they don’t slow things down.
Also, every website should be “responsive”. It has to work equally well on a mobile device or a computer. This is a must for ranking well in today’s search engines.
Security is another issue even if you’re not running an e-commerce site. Your address should begin with “https”. That’s true even if you don’t receive info from your clients on the site. Your hosting provider will usually help you set this up, and some even offer it for free.
Getting good recommendations is also key to success. For websites, references take the form of links. And just like references on your resume, it matters who they come from. Quality is more important than quantity. That means that a link from a page that’s already doing well will help boost you. But a thousand links from random, poor-quality pages won’t help at all, and may even cause you problems.
Ultimately, though, “we don’t know everything” about what goes into your ranking. Great content on pages that function well is essential. But search engines are mostly silent about how their algorithms work. There are good reasons for that – they don’t want anyone to be able to game the system. But it’s also what can make SEO difficult.
Of course, the search engines also make ongoing adjustments. Just because your page is first today doesn’t mean it will stay there tomorrow. Their changes can benefit you, but they may hurt, too.
Fortunately, some companies that do lots of research and analysis about what seems to work and share it online. These serve as a good guide, although some theories do get blown out of the water by the search engines, either because they are wrong or they’re outdated. Staying up-to-date and making adjustments to a site is part of ongoing SEO work.
How Long Does SEO Take
OK, this might not be the answer you want to hear, but SEO isn’t something to can be done once and for all. There are a few reasons for that.
First, it’s not like playing solitaire. You have a lot of competition out there. They’re all trying to be first, too. So even as you move ahead, they’re trying to pass you. It usually also depends on how much competition you have, and how tough your field is. If it’s a topic that’s already flooded with info, it can take a long time to outdo it.
Also, trends change. People today aren’t searching for the same things or in the same way that they did 10, 5, even 2 years ago. It takes research to find out what people are looking for.
Even in the short term, it’s important to remember that it takes time to build good content and to earn links to it. It also takes time for Google to work that into the mix and realign everything.
SEO should be an ongoing part of your marketing budget. Avoid fly-by-night operators who tell you they can get you ranked in days or even weeks. Or at least ask them what they will get you ranked for. If you have a unique brand name, for instance, they will easily get you ranked for your name. But most people aren’t going to search for you by name.
Yes, some short-term steps could be part of SEO, like cleaning up your site’s loading speed. But these alone aren’t going to get you to the top.
What SEO Isn’t
For this final section, I want to briefly talk about what SEO isn’t. Sometimes I see people misusing the term. That can cause all kinds of confusion when you want to research more or if you’re trying to hire someone for another aspect of digital marketing.
SEO only deals with organic search results.
Most search engines also offer paid ads, including ads on their SERPs. But those are not part of SEO. Generally, that is referred to as SEM – search engine marketing. It’s also called PPC – pay per click. It does have many skills in common with SEO, but there are also many divergences.
Social media marketing is not SEO, either. Content creation and curation for LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and other platforms is a task unto itself. It has little to do with search engine results, although there are times when you want your social media profiles or certain posts to rank well, too.
YouTube has a unique niche of SEO. It works a bit differently than regular SEO, but it’s still important to create well-written content for titles and descriptions.
Website design and creation is also a separate field, although SEO principles should be incorporated from the ground up.
Conclusion
SEO is an important part of digital marketing because it helps you to be found in search results. It’s an ongoing process of making sure your pages provide an overall positive experience. It needs to provide content that answers their questions and do it in a way that respects their time and technology. While it’s a long-term investment, it provides results by helping you reach more people simply by appearing near the top of the first page.