What is SEO?

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

Despite the acronym, SEO is as much about people as it is about search engines themselves. It’s about understanding what people are searching for online, the words they’re using, and the content they want to see. Knowing the answers to these questions will allow you to connect to the people who are searching online for the solutions you offer.

If knowing your audience’s intent is one side of the SEO coin, delivering it in a way search engines can find it is the other. In this guide, expect to learn how to do both.

Why SEO is important

While paid advertising, social media, and other platforms can generate traffic to websites, the majority is driven by search engines.

Organic search results cover more digital real estate, appear more credible to savvy searchers, and receive way more clicks than paid advertisements. For example, of all US searches, only ~2.8% of people click on paid advertisements.

In a nutshell: SEO has ~20X more traffic opportunity than PPC on both mobile and desktop.

SEO is also one of the only online marketing channels that will continue to pay dividends over time. If you provide a solid piece of content that deserves to rank for the right keywords, your traffic can snowball over time. Whereas advertising needs continuous funding to send traffic to your site.

Search engines are getting smarter, but they still need our help.

SEO will help deliver better information to search engines so your content can be properly indexed and displayed correctly.