So just what exactly is SEO and why should you care?

SEO stands for search engine optimization. It’s a short-hand term marketers use when talking about how optimized your website is for enabling organic traffic from google and all other search engines. And when we say organic traffic, it’s in contrast to paid traffic through buying a first page ranking on google without “earning” it (see our PPC page for more details on how that all works).

SEO is a fancy way of saying you’d like your website to “play nice” with search engines. And considering over 68% of all online experiences begin with a search engine, it’s kind of a big deal. This becomes even more clear when we consider the fact that on the first page alone, the first five organic results account for 67.60% of all the clicks. What do you think happens if your website ends up on the second or third page? Well… not much of anything – and that is the problem.

That said, google’s search algorithm uses more than 200 factors to rank websites. And so, there’s no magic bullet on consistently ranking on the first page for your chosen keywords. However, high-quality content and link building are two of the most important signals used by Google and other search engines to rank your website for search and more importantly, to make your brand stand out.