What is SEO and Why is it Important?

In recent years the practice and topic of SEO has grown exponentially as more and more people turn to the web. If you own a website or develop websites for a living you’ve likely been introduced to the topic, but do you really know what SEO is and why it’s important? To better understand let’s start with the basics.

First off, SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. Therefore, SEO can most simply be defined as the process of optimizing, or enhancing a website for search engines. “But why?” you may ask. Well, just think about what you did the last time you were looking for something online. Most likely you turned to a search engine, like Google. You simply navigate to Google.com, enter a search term (otherwise know as a keyword) and expect Google to provide you with a set of results relevant to your search. For example, if you search “bikes” you would expect Google to provide you with a list of search results pertaining to bikes.

Similarly if you run a website that sells bikes you would want your site to appear in Google’s top 20 or 30 search results when someone searches for bikes. To accomplish this you need to enhance your website to such an extent that a search engine thinks your site is one of the most relevant or important for a particular keyword – this process is formally known as SEO. Therefore, I would more specifically define SEO as:

The process of enhancing a website to achieve a high rank within search engine result pages for specific keywords.

The bottom line, if you are interested in driving high quality traffic, which can in turn drive revenue, then SEO, is one of the primary ways to accomplish the task. Is SEO part of your marketing strategy?

Next learn about Ethical vs Unethical SEO.