What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

SEO is a marketing strategy that is focused on the visibility of non-paid search engine results. In general, the earlier (higher ranked) and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users and these visitors can then be converted into customers.

Why is SEO important?

A study showed that 90% of Google users only look at the first page of search results. On the first page, people are highly likely to click on the first 3 results. This is why optimizing your website for search engines or doing SEO is so important. Websites in the top 3 results of the first page are likely to be clicked. If they find exactly what they’re looking for on your website they will be the ones most likely to convert into your customers. If your website is not in the top 3 results or on the first page, it is unlikely to be seen by users.

How does SEO work?

A site’s position on a search page is determined by what is known as a page rank. The page rank is calculated based on different types of keywords on the site. In the beginning, search engines used to track websites based only on the keyword entered into the search bar. Entering “flower store” as keywords will show sites with only those two keywords. As a result the more  number of times the keyword occurs in your website, the higher your site will rank in the search page. But in 1996, two PhD students, realized that the websites that display the searched keywords most often doesn’t necessarily mean they were more relevant. However, what mattered more was whether those sites were cited more often by other sites. The amount of sites that refer to your website are called backlinks. However, they applied this citation concept to web searching and that’s how Google was born. All search engines today use this technique. To put it in simple terms, keywords allow Google to SEE your website and backlinks allow Google to TRUST your website.