So, you’ve just hired a Digital Marketing Consultant, and they tell you they’re going to boost traffic to your website through SEO. You’re sitting there scratching your head wondering, “What on Earth is SEO?” Well, in this blog, we’ll go over the basics so that you’re up to speed with this marketing strategy.

What is SEO?

SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization, which is the practice of improving the quality and quantity of traffic to your website from search engines.

To truly understand what SEO is, we must breakdown the definition into its corresponding parts and examine it.

First, we look at the quality of the traffic. So what is quality traffic in the first place? I’ll explain this with an example. People worldwide can visit your website; however, if Google directs a person who wants to buy Apple products to your site while you sell apple pies, that’s low-quality traffic as it won’t be helpful to you nor the visitor. Whereas, visitors looking to purchase apple pies would be part of high-quality traffic as they can buy these products from you.

Once you’ve got the right kind of traffic coming into your website, the larger the quantity of traffic, the better off your business will be.

SEO primarily targets unpaid or organic traffic. While paid ads make up for a significant chunk of most search engine results pages (SERPs), there’s still a lot of organic traffic that you can tap into using SEO.

How does it work?

A search engine is like a web page you visit to type or speak in a question, and consequently, Yahoo!, Google, or whatever default search engine you’re using will instantly produce a long list of sites with potential answers.

However, you might wonder how it produces these results, and how are they so accurate most of the time? Well, the answer lies in a search engine’s algorithm. When you input a query or sentence, your default search engine uses the keywords to find content, which is run through an algorithm to match all the data on the internet to your search. There are many things that this algorithm considers during this process, such as link, content, and brand features at the domain and page level.

Everything mentioned above has to do with the search engine part of SEO. Next, we look at optimization. This part has to do with organizing and preparing content on your website in a way that allows search engines to understand what you’re about. When search engines can understand what’s on your website, they will direct high-quality traffic to your website, and optimized content will ensure that visitors like the content they are viewing, i.e., your landing page. A lot goes into optimization, such as tailoring content to use keywords, providing value, and using quality backlinks.

Search engine algorithms change their parameters and processes often, and similarly, SEO tactics also change frequently. If you’re unsure of the latest trends and confused about employing SEO strategies, consider hiring a Digital Marketing expert. Adzum Creative Digital Marketing can help you drive traffic to your website, build your online presence, and manage your social media! Get in touch to learn more.