What Is SEO and How Does It Work?

What Is SEO?

SEO stands for "search engine optimization." Simply put, it's the process of improving your website to increase its visibility when people search for products or services related to your business on Google, Bing, and other search engines. The better visibility your pages have in search results, the more likely you are to attract attention and draw prospective and existing customers to your business.

How Does SEO Work?

Search engines like Google and Bing use bots to crawl pages on the web, going from site to site, collecting information about those pages, and putting them in an index. Then algorithms analyze pages in the index, taking into account hundreds of ranking factors or signals, to determine the order pages should appear in search results for a given query.

Search ranking factors can be considered proxies for aspects of user experience. Our SEO Factors Table organizes factors into six main categories, each weighted based on its overall importance to SEO. For example, content quality and keyword research are key content optimization factors, while crawlability and mobile-friendliness are important site architecture factors.

Search algorithms are designed to surface relevant, authoritative pages and provide users with an efficient search experience. Optimizing your site and content with these factors in mind can help your pages rank higher in search results.

Unlike paid search ads, you can't pay search engines to get higher organic search rankings.

Why Is SEO Important for Marketing?

SEO is a fundamental part of digital marketing because people conduct trillions of searches every year, often with commercial intent to find information about products and services. Search is often the primary source of digital traffic for brands and complements other marketing channels. Greater visibility and higher ranking in search results than your competition can have a material impact on your bottom line.

However, search results have been evolving over the past several years to give users more direct answers and information that keeps users on the results page rather than directing them to other websites.

Also note that features like rich results and Knowledge Panels in search results can increase visibility and provide users with more information about your company directly in results.

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