What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Many organizations have invested in designing a beautiful website only to have it lost in the forest, er, Interwebs. So what is Search Engine Optimization and why is SEO important?

Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) important? If a website launches on the internet and nobody sees it does it make a difference? [Tip of the cap, George Berkeley]

SEO is the process of optimizing a website to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). The goal of SEO is to improve the visibility of your web content to users when they are searching. It is a fluid journey, not a destination, that involves a lot of different factors technically, logistically, but more often, logically. Let’s look at the two main elements of SEO; on-page and off-page.

On-page SEO involves optimizing the content – text, images, and code – on a site to make it easier to be crawled and indexed by search engines. At a minimum, it is making sure the keywords and primary topics of a web page are properly formatted and in sync with the technical elements. These are things like meta tags, coding that the search engine sees that are invisible to the reader, structure, navigation, and page speed of the website..

Off-page SEO is a way of improving the site’s visibility by securing links (“backlinks”) to its content from external sources. These can include social media pages, online directories, and other authoritative websites like news and industry blogs. It can help validate a site, just like getting a referral from a high-profile customer.

We’ll share more in the coming months about the myriad other aspects of SEO. But the key takeaway is that SEO is an important tool in the digital marketing toolbox that can help your website perform and help you to grow your organization.

SPARKS! can help you learn how your website is performing in search and create ways to boost your visibility.