What is SEO and How Does it Work?

SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is the process of increasing a website or web page’s online visibility in search engines (such as Google). Search engine optimization has an impact on organic (or unpaid) website traffic. Search engine optimization also plays a role in making a website convert organic traffic into quality leads.

Have you ever wondered how websites rank at the top of Google’s search engine result pages (SERPs) for certain keywords? Search engine optimization is the reason.

SEO is important for online marketing success. Businesses that have an effective SEO campaign in place see an increase in website traffic, leads, and conversion rates. Having a website that performs well in regards to SEO can increase revenue for businesses as well. Sounds good, right?

So how does SEO work?

Search engine optimization works by making certain changes to a website’s design and content to improve the site’s performance in search engines. Effective search engine optimization involves having high-quality content on websites. The content should also be relevant to what people are looking for.

Factors that Impact SEO

SEO can be impacted by several factors including:

• Content – high-quality, relevant content is crucial for driving organic traffic to websites and for websites to rank well in search engine result pages. The more relevant and quality content your site has, the more likely pages will rank higher in SERPs.

• On-Page SEO – optimizing title tags, meta descriptions, sub-headings, image ALT tags and adding internal links have an impact on a website’s ranking in search engines. On-page SEO is controlled by website owners or other users with admin access to the backend of a website.

• Off-Page SEO — trust, backlinks and social signals are off-page factors that have an impact on how well a website ranks in search engines. A site that has a high trust level, quality backlinks, and a high number of social signals (such as likes and shares) often perform better in Google’s search engine result pages.