What is SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) helps search engines discover and understand useful web content and helps people find it. It includes work on content, site structure, crawlability, and how pages are presented in search. Good practices can improve visibility, but they do not guarantee a particular ranking.
Why is SEO important?
Think about the last time you wanted to buy a product or a service online. What’s the first thing you did? You probably fired up Google and gave it a search. Thanks to Google, we can now easily find what we need with the search engine. On the flip side for marketers, that means we need to figure out how to stand out and show up on the search engines. Showing up in the search engine is so critical because the searchers are expressing interest in a product or service that you offer and that is your chance to show up.
Think about it like this, if I was selling shoes and I went around offering them to every person on the street, I’d probably have a tough time making a sale. If I sold shoes to people in a shoe store, I’d probably have a lot more luck. When people search for something they are coming to you and expressing their interest. All you have to do is show up.
SEO vs. SEM
Now that we understand the power of the search engine, let’s compare SEO to another search engine option, search engine marketing (SEM). With SEM, or Google Ads, advertisers can pay to show up for specific keywords. Say we sell shoes, but we are struggling to show up in the organic search results, we could go ahead and bid on keywords related to the shoes we sell using Google Ads. You might be thinking, “Wow, I can just pay and be at the top!” Well there are pros and cons to Google Ads compared to SEO.
Paid search campaigns can reach potential customers while ads are running, and their costs depend on campaign settings and the advertising auction. Organic search does not charge an advertising fee for each visit, but useful content, technical maintenance, and ongoing measurement still require work and investment.
SEO is ongoing work. Search results, customer needs, competitors, and websites change over time. Monitor performance, improve content when it needs updating, and fix technical problems that prevent useful pages from being discovered or understood.
Master SEO
If you want to dive deeper into SEO and learn how to do it to drive results for your business check out our SEO classes in NYC or live online offered at our partner school, Noble Desktop.