Definition of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

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I love being number 1, I love to win. Who doesn’t?

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is how you make your website show up on the first page of search engines like Google. SEO is how you win the game of earning more free traffic to your website from search engines.

SEO is the best way to earn free traffic and business online. 

If you’re not on the first page of Google, you’re losing sales to your competitors. A whopping 97 percent of people DON’T click past the first page of results. Can you think of the last time you did?

If you have a website, SEO is the most important thing to do on your site. In fact, as soon as you are ready to launch your site, your SEO needs to be completed. SEO is also one of the most important monthly website maintenance tasks you can do.

Why?

SEO is what you do on your website to make sure it shows up when people are searching for what you have to offer.

Why do you want to show up on the first page of Google search?

Being on the first page of Google is important because it puts your business in front of new customers and creates a sense of authority for your brand.

Being first says to people that you’re website is important and authoritative.

Most importantly, showing up on the first page of Google also means your website link gets clicked on more.

How much more? Check out these stats:

  • Position 1 – 20.5%
  • Position 2 – 13.32%
  • Position 3 – 13.14%
  • Position 4 – 8.98%
  • Position 5 – 9.21%
  • Position 6 – 6.73%
  • Position 7 – 7.61%
  • Position 8 – 6.92%
  • Position 9 – 5.52%
  • Position 10 – 7.95%

What is SEO and how does it benefit your website?

SEO Definition: SEO is an abbreviation that stands for Search Engine Optimization.

SEO impacts how your website is found through search engines like Google and Bing when you search for stuff on the web using words or phrases.

These words are also known as keywords or keyword phrases and they are at the heart of how searching for stuff on the internet works.

For example, if you do a quick search for the keyword phrase “What is SEO” you will most likely get a variety of results that relate to defining Search Engine Optimization.

Here are some of the top results from the first SERP (Search Engine Results Page) that attempt to help define “what is SEO”:

  • Search Engine Watch
    • SEO is the umbrella term for all the methods you can use to ensure the visibility of your website and its content on search engine results pages (SERPs)
  • Search Engine Land
    • SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It is the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural” search results on search engines.
  • MOZ
    • SEO is a marketing discipline focused on growing visibility in organic (non-paid) search engine results. SEO encompasses both the technical and creative elements required to improve rankings, drive traffic, and increase awareness in search engines. There are many aspects to SEO, from the words on your page to the way other sites link to you on the web. Sometimes SEO is simply a matter of making sure your site is structured in a way that search engines understand.
  • Wikipedia
    • Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine’s unpaid results—often referred to as “natural”, “organic”, or “earned” results.

What SEO definition can you trust to be right?

As you can see for yourself, even among authoritative sites such as Wikipedia and MOZ, there are differing explanations and definitions about what SEO is.

The interesting point about the definitions i’ve shown you here is that they are from search engine industry thought leaders (with the exception of Wikipedia, which is publically written and reviewed).

And they are all slightly different.

So, if these definitions are coming from the industry leaders, who is more right? Who is more accurate?

Critically examining the choices laid out in this article (and hopefully doing a quick search on your own!), you start to see this:

SEO is a Marketing discipline that encompasses a variety of important technical and non-technical factors which affect the visibility of a website or webpage in a web search engine’s unpaid, organic search results.

What are the most important factors that affects SEO you ask? Great question, Here are the top 10 most important factors that affect SEO:

  1. Secured sites (HTTPS vs. HTTP)
  2. Websites that are mobile-friendly
  3. Page speed
  4. Schema markup
  5. Webpage content quality
  6. Webpage content length
  7. Social and local signals
  8. Quality backlinks
  9. Optimized images
  10. Domain age

Are you ready to optimize your WordPress blog post with the Yoast SEO plugin? Learn how to do on-page SEO!

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Post tags, click one to be taken to similar stories! ---> keyword phrases, Preet Mroke, Search Engine Optimization, SEO Best Practices, SEO ROI, value of SEO

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